


Reasons To Be Missed

by SophiaRemembers



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancestors (Homestuck), Breif mention of beta trolls at the end, Dubious Consent, Everybody Dies, F/M, Hemoism, Retelling, The Ancestors' Story, handmaid is here to fuck your shit up, headcanons, hemocaste, mindfang and dolorosa are more dubious consent, sad but true, tags are likely to change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-01-21 18:11:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12463134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaRemembers/pseuds/SophiaRemembers
Summary: "The birth of a universe is both instantaneous and infinite. As you sit at the edge, you can see it all."12 trolls influenced Alternian history, giving their descendants strength to play a game. An Outcast becomes a prophet, a hero becomes an example to the masses, a follower becomes a scribe. Their stories end in death but their choices will allow their descendants' stories to end in victory.





	1. Prologue: Where Do We Begin? The Rubble or Our Sins?

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm aware that this has more or less been done before but I figured I would post my own take on it regardless. So here, have the story of the Alternian Ancestors complete with my own headcanons/theories and my love of pain.

_The birth of a universe is both instantaneous and infinite. As you sit at the edge, you can see it all. The little bubble of time you've contorted around yourself allows you to play the universe's expansion at your own pace. A planet is born, deep inside the frog's gut and it is both familiar and entirely new to you._

_You tap a hand to your bubble and zoom in closer to the planet. There wouldn't be life, not intelligent and self-aware life at least, for billions of sweeps. But already, with use of a bit of time manipulation and perhaps a bit of help from an omniscient host, you can already see the ways you will be affect this planet and it's populations. The wars, the rebellions, the violent nature that becomes inborn and natural, the genocides, even the hemoist caste system, they will all be because of you. This world will be thrown into turmoil and you will be feared as a demon._

_Your name is Damara Megido, you are The Handmaid and you are here to watch the universe burn._

 


	2. Chapter One: Destroy The Middle, It's A Waste of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, good old genocide.

You breathe heavily, panting in short gasps but with a smile on your face that could only be described as prideful and menacing. You had won. Not that there had been any doubt, but you were always much more comfortable once a difficult task had been completed and you didn’t have to worry about  _ others  _ screwing things up. 

You are young, barely past your 9th sweep, hardly considered an adult. No one expected you to challenge so soon and honestly that’s what made it so glubbin’ beautiful. If Meenah Peixes wanted something done, it was glubbin’ well going to be done and going to be done in style. 

Pulling your gold 2x3dent from the fuschia throat of a now dead, used-to-be-empress, you stare at her for a moment longer. There were no cheers, as you gave the body one final and defining kick and finally looked up at the crowd. As you look at the faces that held varying mixes of horror, shock and apprehension you realized as annoying as she had been, the curly horned demon troll lady had been right. Running away to hide on some lonely moon was not an option. You weren’t some weak ass bitch like the the rest that had challenged the Empress and failed. 

Moving away from the body and climbing onto a large boulder with some effort (the fight hadn’t been exactly been a swim with the currant, alright?), you stand to your full height at the very peak and raise the 2x3dent over your head victoriously, fuschia blood still dripping from the tips. Some of your own blood is running down your arm and mixing with the drying blood of a now dead troll. You reach up with your free hand and smear the pinkish blood across your cheeks, no longer knowing who it belongs to as you paint your face with fingertip streaks and then clench the hand down in a fist by your side.

“You better cheer motherglubbers, I’m the empress now,” you shout.

There was hesitation but slowly cheers start to fill the arena and your prideful grin spreads until it is nothing but sharp teeth and power. That’s more like it. The hesitation will be fixed in time. You would have your new empire shaped up to your liking and they had better deal with it. 

You would not be a slave, but now you had another way to prove it. This was your planet now and you would rule with a golden fin. And if they knew what was good for them, they wouldn’t bother trying to fight it. You were in full control and you would not be stopped.

 

***

_ Some hundred odd sweeps later… _

 

“The Limebloods have become a problem.”

The Indigo clown before you is your most promising Subjugglator so far. He does not fear you, and though you think he should, as any troll should, you find that you have come to like it over time. Though occasionally you think he might be laughing at you. Not out loud of course, not even he would dare. But sometimes even you, the most powerful troll on the planet, felt so small under his gaze, he wasn’t even full grown and it was infuriating. But to get angry would mean to admit insecurity and you would be dead and gone before you showed any sign of that. Which is to say never. 

Regardless, he was loyal in his own weird freaky way. He was moving up the ranks quickly and you were about ready to place him at the head. He was far more competent than the insufferable mush for brains that was in the position now anyways. He might have his crazy clown cult thing going on but as far as you are concerned, as long as he does his job keeping trolls in line and reports to you couldn’t give another glubbin’ fuck what he did in his free time.

You inspect your hand and rest your cheek against the fist of the other crossing a leg over the other and tapping a foot in the air. You pretend to mull this over for a moment but really you were just brooding. This was very disappointing. You’re little subjects were doing so whale too, you were hoping it would have lasted longer, but you had suspected the limebloods to be your biggest threat since before your battle against the previous empress. Their strong psychic ability, lifespans that can reach the hundreds and their strong persuasion capabilities were not something to laugh at, and never once had you cracked a smile at the threat of their caste. You were simply hoping you could subdue them with fear just as you had all the rest of the troll race. Apparently they weren’t so easily suppressed. How annoying.

You sit up and lean back against your throne as you stare down at the indigoblood. He doesn’t look away and you can’t decide if that bothers you or not. 

“And why haven’t you done anyfin aboat it Makara?” you ask, because there is no way this could ever your fault ever.

He doesn’t flinch and instead smiles, much bigger than what is necessary or even comfortable. You have to fight a scowl from your own lips. You don’t make a habit of knowing names, not unless you for some god forsaken reason come to find that you like the troll or they serve a purpose that last longer than a few sweeps. Kurloz might have caught onto this and you make an internal pact with yourself to be more careful about that. You don’t want the clown getting ideas after all.  

“I have been my sister. But it has made itself a bigger problem than what we thought. Our hunts just aint workin’.”

You had long given up on fighting the almost disrespectful mode of Kurloz’s speech and instead focus on the content on the message rather than how it is delivered.

“I need the deets clown.”

You tap long claws against the armrest of your throne as he speaks.

“There’s gonna be a Rebellion against a rulin’ sister. I hear the whispers that my brothers bring me. Limebloods have been talkin’, tellin’ people nasty stuff about a fuschia sister. Been usin’ their mind majiks to get people agreein’ with them. They’ve gone and raised themselves an army and they’re gonna hunt you down.”

All of this is said without a tremor of fear that would be found in the voice of a lesser troll and without the bias of someone aiming to please, to assure you that they were on your side and against these pesky lowblood trolls. Instead there’s a hint of pleasure as if this news almost amusing to the troll standing before you. 

As for the solution to this problem, it’s simple and you don’t even give it a second thought.

“Cull them all. Find every last limeblood and cull them. I don’t want any left alive. They’ve been a fork in ma side for far too long now and clearly gettin’ rid of the noisy ones ain’t workin’.”

This order seemed to please the clown and his grin grew to toothily unsettling levels. He didn’t respond but it was clear he got the message.

“And Makara. You’re promoated to Grand High Blood. Do with that what you want.” 

You wave a hand and dismiss him. He bows and disappears into the shadows. The painted face smile never faltering. Damn clowns.

You shake off whatever lingering uneasiness had settled on your shoulders and stand from your throne, heels clacking against the stone floor. 

You barely get a perfectly manicured hand on the ornately carved golden handles of the throne room doors when _ she  _ appears. You feel her presence far sooner than any of your other senses kick in to alert you to her visit. Shore, it’s been a few sweeps-give or take a hundred or so- since you’ve seen her, but that aura was far from somefin you ever forgot. 

You refuse to open turn around. She showed up here uninvited in  _ your  _ home. You’re the fucking queen and you turn around for no one. If the demon bitch has somefin to say to you, she can float around or whatever it is she does and say it to your face. She will cater to your pettiness. As if to push this point home, you open the door slowly with a bit of extra pressure to give it an extra creak. It’s not supposed to make that noise but you know your doors, you know how to make things (and people) do what you want and you know, if all else fails how to be dramatic to make a point. The point always being that you are either right or in control and most of the time both at once.

You don’t bother closing the door behind you, not because you suddenly find yourself in a fit of courtesy for your unexpected (and therefore rather unwelcome) guest, but because at this point in your reign, tiny things around the castle, such as open doors, have found ways of fixing themselves with nary a thought from yourself. It only took a few dozen sweeps of culling incorrigible and incompetent servants to get that settled and into place.

Without looking around, you know she is following you. You had hoped she wouldn’t, but sometimes, things in life are hard. Not your life, of course. Your life is great and the hardest part are the stupid trolls who don’t know how to do their fucking jobs or just annoy you. At least you can be grateful she hasn’t bothered you with words yet.

“I’m impressed.”

Whale, so much for that idea.

You snort but that’s all the response you deign to bother gracing her with as you continue to your room. 

She floats forward so that she’s lingering in the corner of your vision and o-cray, that’s just fucking annoying. You pick up your pace and she disappears behind you again, not bothering to keep up with your long strides.

“The Lime bloods,” she says, as if you had asked for an explanation. Which you hadn’t, not even in your head and you had inferred from your first meeting that she was a burgundy blood, which meant high chances of psychic power. Whether that meant she could read your mind or not was left to be determined, but who knew what other freaky powers she had beyond the normal troll. Seriously, the bitch shows up again after hundreds of sweeps, when she should have died in the first dozen, looking no older than when they had last met. Talk about creepy shit. 

“I didn’t even have to prompt you into that decision. This is wonderful!” She swoops in front of you with a smile that puts crazy into her eyes and shows too many teeth. You wonder if her feet even touch the floor but bother her not the worth the effort of checking. 

“I don’t need your pride or pat on the back or whatever it was you came here to give me.” You said, stepping down the short flight of stairs with a little extra stomp than necessary. You don’t think she noticed, or cared. 

“I was sure you would take more nudging, but you are doing far better than I predicted.”

“Shore, Tanks.” You say with a roll of your eyes as you open the door up to your bedroom suite. “Are we done here? You’ve been the opposite of helpful so go ahead and clamscray before I get my itchy queen fingers going and start getting stabby.”

The demon laughs and your fingers twitch, this isn’t just a lack of fear, this was blatant insubordination and you would  _ not  _ have it, not on your planet, not in your castle and much less just outside your bedroom where you were so close to the freedom of idiot minions and crazy demon lowbloods that don’t seem to die like they should. 

“Don’t be too bothered about the Lime bloods, it was meant to be. But it won’t be the last.” she says, her smile gone but her face still amused in a rather eerie way that leaves a unsettled feeling in your stomach. What is it with these crazy trolls and their creepy-ass faces today? You’ve had about enough of it and if they weren’t so fucking helpful you would have had them all culled yesterday.

You make a show of rolling  your eyes and look anywhere but her. “I’m not bothered, the scum deserved it.” And it was the truth, nowhere in your body did you feel a pang of guilt or a hint of sadness. There was only a simple pride in showing off your power and the confidence that it would set things straight again and teach the pathetic lowbloods a lesson.

Scoffing you turn from the demon completely and absconded as regally as possible, which was pretty fucking regally because it was impossible for you to be anything but. You think you might catch a small nod before you close the door and maybe the demon vanishing into nothing before you close the door, but you refuse to give her the satisfaction of checking. 

Flopping into a lounge chair by the window that overlooks the sea you are not brooding. You are far above brooding and it has been a grand glub-fucking day. But the fucking demon-bitch’s words linger in your head.

_ ‘But it won’t be the last.’ _

What that ever glubbing- _ fuck _ was that supposed to  _ mean. _

And why won’t it leave you alone. Nothing, that’s what it meant and you refuse to be bothered by it.

You stand from the chair with a huff, not even the crashing waves can sooth you now and you strip and sink down into a recuperacoon that gives you enough room to stretch in all ways and then some. You let the sopor smooth any tension in mind and body and sink lower into the slime. 

“Crazy cryptic demon bitch,” you mutter to yourself as your head sinks under the surface and finally you are officially dead to the world. You would be sure to bask in these moments of peace while they lasted for a queen’s job was never done and who knew what kind of fucked up crazy you would have to stick your fork in next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments? Questions? Concerns? Hit me up at rogueofpans.tumblr.com


	3. Chapter Two: They Had Lights Inside Their Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can kill me, but it won't keep me down.

 

 

The brooding caverns are dark, or so you have heard, but they have been your home since you were old enough to remember and thus they seem no darker or lighter than anyplace else you have experienced. In this case, that is very little beyond the brooding caverns. You did once venture out, shortly after your first pupation. Curious and not yet sure of your place or your role in the world, you were drawn by the looming tunnels and eventually by the light of the harsh Alternian sun. You were, of course, caught and returned to your place within the caverns but even to this day, you have not forgotten that light. 

You have since been told of its dangers but you are uncertain about how much you believe the stories. Most of what you hear of the surface world you have learned to take with a grain of salt. If you could not logic it’s existence simply from your own memories and your surroundings, you might be inclined to believe that it didn’t exist at all. Regardless, everybody knew of the surface; their number one law as Jadebloods that they were forbidden from ever visiting it. 

Occasionally you would receive news: new laws, an important culling, update on the Empress’ plans for the future which themselves seemed to fluctuate on the details but maintain the overall premise of ‘Everybody will know my name and bow. I will never stop being Empress so deal with it’. Those who didn’t follow her as if loyalty was their very soul were terrified of her. You would be a fool to admit to being anything than a troll that fell into the latter category. You like to think it’s a healthy fear, as healthy as it can be when you have spent your life tending to the mother grub as your Empress culls another helpless soul for something as simple as forgetting to close a door.

You are sympathetic, but it is hard to relate to the pain and struggle on the surface as you sit in relative safety below ground, close to being literally blind to the trials that rage above you. In a way you find it unfair and infuriating. Who decided that life should be structured this way. You understood your importance, the need for what rare Jadeblood was born to stay and make sure that the species continued on. But was it worth it when the world above they were being thrown to was known to be so harsh and unforgiving? It is a question you have been debating for many sweeps now. You dare not bring it up for fear of a culling for insubordination. 

Still the thoughts like to return and simmer around in your thinkpan in times such as these, when your soft footsteps echo off the stone walls and you head deeper into the caverns knowing the halls well enough that you can let your feet carry you to your destination with little to no conscious thought on your part, letting your mind wander. 

_ “You could help you know. Make the world a better place.” _

The voice is hardly above a whisper but it startles you all the same as it echoes down the hall, making it impossible to place. You had assumed you were alone and lowering a hand from your chest, you turn slowly in hopes of covering your alarm.

Standing before you is a burgundyblood with curling horns and long wild hair. She is a good head shorter than you but makes up for it with the lankiness of her body that causes her to appear taller than she actually is. 

“Excuse me, but you’re not supposed to be down here.” You say this as politely as possible, but inside your head alarm bells are sounding. Rarely do you get actual troll visitors and when you do they are high blood servants of Her Imperious Condescension, never have you had one this low and never had a troll other than a Jade come this deep into the caverns. Your mind is spinning with all the possibilities of what this could mean and the one that continuously stabs through the rest is the thought of your fellow Jade bloods lying in pools of their own blood.

You swallow and she smiles. You assume it’s meant to be soothing but instead of softening her eyes, it makes them light up with an almost crazed, unpleasant  _ knowing _ .

“On the contrary, this is exactly when I’m supposed to be.”

Alright, so you had no inkling as to what that could possibly mean because there was no logic that could explain it. Still your try your best.

“Are you lost?” You ask, unable to keep your voice from softening and rising in pitch as if you were talking to one of the grubs that had run themselves into a crevice and gotten stuck. 

She shakes her head and her hair swirls around her horns and shoulders before settling again. From the looks of her, she has at least reached adulthood, her eyes matching the color of her blood, but she was youthful enough to still have a handful of sweeps left. 

That smile hasn’t wavered and you are about ready to abscond, as cautiously and smoothly as you can, straight down to the storage cavern where all the culling tools were kept. You were already heading there after all so it wouldn’t be as if you had to lie about such a move.

Before you are able to even open your mouth to excuse yourself however, you are distracted by a frighteningly familiar skittering that is followed by a small thump and a chittering cry of a distressed grub. 

Instincts kick in almost immediately and you turn around in search of the source of the sound. You are partially away of the burgundyblood’s eyes watching you as you spot a soft underbelly and waving legs of a over turned grub unable to turn itself back upright. 

You have often been told that you are too soft on the grubs, to let them be and if they need your help than they aren’t fit to be on the surface. You don’t know whether it’s boredom or instinct that causes you to act a little more nurturing towards the grubs than what is expected or even natural. Regardless, you now they are right and you attempt to keep it to a minimum.

But that doesn’t stop you, when no one is around other than the burgundyblood girl, and you’re not really sure she even counts, from flipping the small grub back onto its feet and watching it skitter away. It shouldn’t even be this deep, this is one of the few halls that you attempt to keep grub free for ease of movement if nothing else as well as to keep them out of the culling equipment.

However, this grub doesn’t move and instead what you had assumed was a burgundyblood looks up at you with startlingly bright red eyes and you choke on a gasp that you quickly cover with a clawed hand. 

“Oh,” is all you can say and suddenly you become frighteningly aware of the burgundyblood’s presence behind you. 

Before you know what you are doing, your body acting before your mind, you lean over and sweep the grub into your arms. “It won’t even be used for paint…” you find yourself saying but the voice is distant and disconnected from your body. “It’ll be discarded in some dark corner and never spoken of again. It will never even be given a chance.”

You are vaguely aware of the girl nodding beside you, that grin even wider now, something you didn’t think possible. You wonder that if she looked any more pleased if her face would crack like the stone in drastic temperature fluxuations. 

Even before she speaks, you have made up a plan and your mind to follow it, the strange troll’s single word only seems to make you realize this. 

“Run!”

It’s enough to break you out of the shocked stupor you had at seeing a mutant blood, something that is rather embarrassing in hindsight but also something you can think about and chastise yourself over later, for now the only thought you have is  _ out out out. _

Between one breath and the next you are turning on a heel and running with a speed and grace you haven’t used in sweeps, away from depths of the caverns, away from the storage cavern, away from the jadebloods that have been your closest thing to a family but who would turn on you in the span of a breath if they only  _ knew _ what you were now doing.

This is a stupid plan, simply idiotic. There is no way you can get away with it. But as you twist your way through a maze of tunnels you know by heart, taking emergency detours whenever you catch the echo of a conversation or the trail of a gown in a certain direction, you start to foolishly hope that perhaps you will actually make it. Right now, all you can think of is getting to the surface and finding a place to hide. From there you can work everything into a plan, but for now you just need  _ out out out. _

Your breath is coming now in short gasps and you start to fear that you might be lost. Surely the surface must be closer than this. Panic spreads and you stumble, scraping your elbows on the hard floor as you hug the grub close to your chest to keep it from getting hurt.

“Porrim, are you alright? What is with the rush? Is there an emergency?”

Tucking the grub close in an attempt to conceal it from the other jadeblood you stand and look at her over your shoulder, a little relieved to find the newest addition to your team, a frail girl with horns that already seem to big for her head, sticking out at almost awkward angles.

“No, I’m quite alright Ankora, simply lost track of time and thought I was behind. I was lost in my worry and tripped but it’s nothing to worry about. You had better return to your duties before Jimeri catches you lingering.”

With a sigh of relief in your lungs, that seems to get her going as she lets out a small squeak and rushes off to finish whatever task she had been set to.

Realizing now that you must be more cautious than you had been before, you proceed slower towards the surface. It is an agonizing pace, but it is clear that your speed before was simply attracting too much attention as much as you were trying to be fast enough to avoid it all together. 

Anxiety builds, pushing blood through your veins at a pace that is almost painful and tightening your lungs to a level that is making it hard to breathe. Every rolling pebble, every drip of water, every distant echoing of a footstep, once a soothing and comforting sound of home, are now stabs in the back of your betrayal and screams of danger to your paranoid mind. Each sound causes you to tighten your hold on the grub who has been blessedly quiet thus far and you wonder how it is that you have yet to smother him. Perhaps it would be better than the fate you are planning on leading him to.

But that is a thought for another time as you spy that faint light from your memories and pick up the pace slightly. 

Paranoia still plagues you, memories of being dragged away from the entrance to the cavern by the horns causes you to constantly glance over your shoulder to check if you are being followed. 

The light has a hint of pink to it, rather than the reddish-golden light you remember. Perhaps it is for the best, who knew what the sun’s rays would do to the grub, much less to yourself. 

Before you is an expanse of grey wasteland, canopied by a dark sky filled with a careless scattering of stars, framed by the cave’s entrance. Already you can feel the chilled breeze of the night air. Just a few more steps and you would have made it.

You dash through before you get the chance to second guess yourself or give any thought to what your doing at all.

With long strides you have passed the last stretch in three steps what should have taken you six and without hesitation you keep going until the caverns are nothing but a distant dot hidden behind the crest of a hill. 

It is only when you collapse to the ground and let the wiggler fall gently to your lap that you realize that the burgundyblood is gone. You weren’t sure if you expected  her to follow you, but you can only help that she hasn’t spread word of your self-imposed exile. You only need a few days to get a plan together and all you need is some laughassassin or legislacerator after her head as a rogue jadebloood.

Or perhaps it wouldn’t be quite that dramatic, it wasn’t as if you had anything to base this escapade off of.

In your lap the wiggler gives a small cooing sound and buries it face into the folds of your dress. You feel your heart break and only realize you are crying when you notice the green-tinted tears hitting its red shell. 

“What am I supposed to do now?” you ask, not the grub exactly, but whatever Gods may be listening that have led you down this path. There is disdain in your voice you think, and you like to believe that if you continue down this path, you’ll come to ask that question with a somewhat mournful acceptance. You can’t go back now, that would mean nothing but death for you both and then what would be the point.

You lay back as the wiggler tickles your thighs with its many sharp legs, apparently attempting to get comfortable. Staring at the sky, you attempt to connect the stars as if they will lead you in a path that makes sense.

“First thing’s first, we need to find someplace to let you pupate,” you say as your hand mindlessly finds the shaggy hair of the wiggler and scratches between a pair of horns that are too small, even for a grub.

The wiggler makes a strange sort of rumbling sound you’ve never heard from a grub before and pushes its head into your hand. You sit up on an elbow to see what could only describe as a look of pleasure on the creature’s face. How unusual.

You stop your hand and the wiggler lets out a disappointed chirr as you let out a sigh and push yourself up from the ground.

“More of that later,” you promise, and you wonder how you have already become so attached. It’s unnatural to be certain. Trolls didn’t usually make bonds like this, never before, as far as you know, has an adult troll attempted to raise a grub to maturity, but it seems that that is exactly what you were attempting here to do. You weren’t even sure if it was possible, but if nothing else, you figured you’ve had enough knowledge of being a troll to give it a shot. 

You brush off your skirt and tuck the wiggler back into the crook of your elbow to let it settle against your stomach, stretched along the length of your arm. 

“For now, we must get as far as possible before the sun comes up, I do not wish to learn of its effects on either of us.”

You start off, picking a direction at random that carries you away from the caverns, but towards what, you’re not certain, and part of you isn’t sure you are ready to find out.

 

_ Days later but not many… _

 

When ever your arms grew tired you would place the wiggler down to skitter along beside you as long as you deemed it safe to do so. The creature already seemed rather attached to you as it did well to follow along in your footsteps, letting out small cries when it couldn’t keep up. You didn’t have long before it would need to start building its cocoon and you still weren’t sure what you were going to do when the time came. You were still wandering this barren wasteland without even a tree that the grub could hang itself from. You would need someplace much more secluded, regardless. Someplace as open as this would only leave it as a matter of time before you were attacked and defenseless in its cocoon, the pupating wiggler would be slaughtered.

And so you would make your way for the haze on the horizon you could only hope was  _ something _ and after a day or two more it became just that. The blotted dark mass that lined the horizon cleared into a large gathering of individual trees and you could almost give out a cry of joy at this good fortune. A forest was exactly what you needed, good cover from both prying eyes and the harsh Alternian sun. 

You lift the wiggler into your arms, ignoring it’s small squeaking cry in protest of the manhandling as you break into a run. 

Your lungs are burning as you break the tree line and you stumble on a root, your feet adjusting to the suddenly uneven ground. You give a rather hysterical laugh and only then do you realize just how paranoid you really have been since leaving the caverns. You’re not out of the woods completely. Speaking literally, you have just entered them, but the point was that you felt like a mountain had been released from your shoulders and you aren’t sure if you are touching the ground any longer. The paranoia is still there of course, the anxiety that crushes your bones with fear and makes your neck sore as you constantly check over your shoulder, but it is much lighter now, more of a dull throb rather than a stabbing pain in your spine. You can handle the throbbing, it’s enough to keep you vigilant while no longer hindering you.

Leaning against a tree to catch your breath, you once again praise your good luck, whispering a silent prayer to whatever God cares to listen before using your shoulders to push off the rough trunk and head deeper into the dense mass of trees.

It’s much darker here, and while your years in the brooding caverns have adapted your eyes to such lighting, it would seem that in the few days you’ve been on the surface, your eyes have decided to adapt to the fresh lighting of your new environment faster than you think should be natural and now back in the dim lighting that you should be far more accustomed to your eyes take several minutes to adjust. All in all it’s simply bothersome and you could do without. 

You are also surrounded by new sounds that have your fingers twitching. You can only assume that it will take a while before you grow used to the new cracks and rustles and whistles of whatever beasts lay in the shadows of the branches around you. As long as they don’t bother you, you couldn’t care less about them.

Pulling the wiggler closer, you hum softly to yourself though you are uncertain as to whether it is more to comfort your own nerves or to sooth the worried chittering the wiggler is making in your arms.

“It’s alright,” you say, as if that will justify the humming and preserve your dignity, whatever of it you have left.

The sound of your voice seems to calm the tiny grub and you relax a little. Last thing you need is its cries alerting any dangers that are waiting to pounce.

A rustle of underbrush far too close to you has you spinning and slipping on damp dirt and leaves.

You fall hard onto your backside and let out a small curse as a shock runs through the arm you attempted to catch yourself with. The wiggler lets out a squeaking cry of shock as you fall but otherwise is unharmed as you hold it close to your body and once again attempt to sooth its whimpers as you rotate your wrist of your other hand, assessing the damage. Nothing it would seem other than a tingling soreness. That’s a relief at least.

But then there’s the rustling again and you couldn’t mistake the sound of a growl and your whole body freezes. You don’t have a chance to scramble to your feet as a large white lusus with a furred coat, large paws, and sharp teeth extending from an elongated muzzle pounces and lands straddling your legs. 

You don’t dare move, you hardly dare breathe as the creature pants over you, it’s saliva dripping onto your thighs, leaving warm wet spots on your dress that cool rapidly in the chilled forest air.

The lusus growled again and  you have to bite your lip from whimpering but then it takes a snip at _your_ wiggler and you’re growling. Curling your fingers into the dirt, you take the offensive and swipe your claws of your free arm across the muzzle of the lusus. 

It yelps, jumping slightly and stumbling to the side before whipping back to face you with anger now in its eyes. 

When it lunges again, it’s a real attack and not just a threat of curiosity. You move out of the way but a large paw, claws bared, still catches your leg. You let out a cry and the wiggler mimics your distress.  

You swipe again with your claws but this time only get air and are forced to roll out of the way of another attack from the lusus. You crush the wiggler slightly under your weight before you’re on your feet and making a quick mental note to apologize later. 

You and the lusus circle each other growling and baring teeth, waiting for the other to make a move or misstep and leave an opening. When one of you finally does, it’s a whirl of snarls and claws as you attack each other with a viciousness that only comes from a guardian protecting its ward. 

One of you has to slip up though and only when it’s too late do you realize that that person was meant to be you. 

You’re not sure how it happens. You shift left when you should shift right, you step back when you should have ducked forward. Regardless, the jade blood swelling at an alarming rate from the far too deep gashes in your stomach comes all the same and at almost a surprise. You cough and blood spills from your mouth and as you collapse to your knees you find yourself the piece of mind to fall back and to the side to keep the wiggler from being crushed under your quite soon to be literal dead weight. You have a brief moment where you are grateful that you were holding the small creature to your shoulder during the fight and so the lusus’ claws had missed it. Perhaps it can find a nice branch to hang from and pupate  into the strong troll you knew it would be and a kind lusus will take it in and it’ll be safe and loved, just like you always wanted.

But dreams are the things of nightmares and no sooner than you think such a fantasy, the lusus nuzzles down and grabs the wiggler in its mouth. 

You both let out a strangled cry, but yours is much weaker and gargled with blood. You make a swipe to get the wiggler back but your perception is off and your vision is going blurry. As such, your muscles refuse to respond to your desperate attempts to keep the wiggler safe and close to you and your arm falls limp and useless to the ground beside you. 

The lusus stares down at you for a long moment and while the feral look is gone from its eyes, its expression is unreadable before it turns and trots away into the trees.

Dying is slow and painful but you’re not sure if the pain in your chest is from your bloodpusher trying desperately to keep working or the loss of the only thing important to you in this life being taken away wordlessly in the teeth of a great best. Perhaps it’s both and you’re sure that’s exactly the case as your eyes drift close and you let out  your final breath.

 

~~~

 

When you awake again, it is with new clarity and in a white glow that is both warm and comforting. A thirst consumes you and a moment of rage to equal it. A new strength makes your muscles almost throb and you sit up with a snarl. You have no idea how long you were dead, but dead you are certain you were, this is not a feeling you get from a simple rest. However, as renewed as you feel, dying is not an experience you wish to repeat any time soon or in any lifetime. 

You stand with a little effort and discover that the glow surrounding you is doing that a little more literally than you had initially thought. Turning your hands over and rolling up your sleeves it becomes blatantly clear that you are the one emitting the glow. You have many questions and none of them have answer.

One thing at least is certain: if there’s a chance that the wiggler is still alive, you are going to rescue it whether it causes your second death or the death of whoever or whatever got in your way. And if the wiggler was found dead… well, that lusus didn’t have much longer either way.

Letting your thirst drive you, you take off into the direction that the lusus had left you and with your new agility and speed, it only takes you moments to reach the clunky treehouse where the lusus paced around on the ground.

You don’t even think, you simply walk up as silent as a breeze, grab the lusus around the muzzle with new strength and slice open its throat with a slash of claws. Olive blood spurts, across your arm and face and you hear a familiar cry. You smile as you wipe blood from under your eye with the back of a hand as you step over to the base of the massive tree where the wiggler squirms on its back, rather upset but otherwise unharmed. 

“You killed him!”

You look up in shock to see a young oliveblood, he couldn’t be any older than four sweeps, leaning out the window of the hive built into the trees. You finally connect that the lusus actually had a charge and briefly wonder how on earth it built a hive into the trees. Suddenly your heart sinks as you slowly look from the troll to his lusus and fully realize what you have done.

You don’t say a word as you climb up the tree nimbly with the wiggler tucked into an arm  and the oliveblood scrambles back from the window, screaming a mess of words that you chose to ignore because they don’t make a difference in what  you are about to do.

You can taste his fear and you are uncertain as to whether the twist in your stomach is excitement, pity or guilt. You don’t care to puzzle it out as you do not wish to know the answer. 

The troll boy’s words fall silent as your teeth sink into his neck. It’s a mercy really. No troll should be left orphaned, especially not this young. He would be in for a far worser fate if you had left him to fend on his own and you had already taken in one child, you had no room for another that had already made his home and whose blood did not leave him reason to fear the world, not like the wiggler in your arm did.

Once you had your fill, you stay with the oliveblood until his bloodpusher gives up completely and then use tender fingers to brush the hair from his forehead. There was nothing that could be said, no apologies that could make up for the harm you had caused. You weren’t sure you would completely mean them anyways, you were only protecting your charge as any good lusus would do. 

Still, the guilt was light and lingering. As much as you knew the surface world would be cruel, you did not wish to be part of the meaningless slaughter. 

Standing, you wipe the blood from your lips, the blood from the lusus already starting to dry and crust on your skin and clothes.

So let this death have meaning. If nothing else, let it be a message to any who happens upon the bodies, whether they know the cause or not, that you are not to be trifled with. You will protect this wiggler to your last breath and then do it again. 

And as he grows, let him know this and be filled with love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a little longer to get out than what I intended, editing took some time, but I have the next few chapters written and so the only thing that is holding up any update in the future is betaing/editing. I hope you enjoyed this chapter,   
>  please look forward to more in the next couple of weeks! If you have any questions direct them to rogueofpans.tumblr.com


	4. Chapter Three: My Heart is Gold and My Hands Are Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We all have to start somewhere.

It isn’t until well into your second sweep that you are given a name. You aren’t sure if it has to do with Porrim’s constant internal struggle of being a troll raising another troll—which apparently isn’t all that common, and people are really mean to her about it. But you know she feels guilty sometimes. Even when she lies to you and tells you that she could never feel guilty to have someone as wonderful as you to raise. 

You aren’t sure if a lack of a name is a result of Porrim’s fear of getting to attached to you or not which you think is rather silly, you’re already attached! You would die for her, you know you would, just as she already did once for you. You don’t tell her that, though, because you don’t like to see her get upset. Her eyes go distant and she gets this kind of tight, pained look as she tries not to cry. It makes your insides do funny thing, so you try not to say things that make her put on that face. 

But you’re old enough now, old enough to want to be called something other than “Dear” or “Darling”. Those aren’t real troll names, you know because you asked, and Porrim is the smartest person you know—the only person you know, really, as she won’t let you get close to anybody else. She told you it was because of your blood as soon as you were old enough to understand, and hasn’t stopped telling you since. 

“Dear,” she would say, every time you got reckless. “Nobody must ever know about your blood color. It would be very bad. We would both die very painful deaths.”

Her eyes were serious enough to scare you, and she had a habit of grabbing your wrist so tight you were frightened that it might bruise in attempt to make you listen. Never once have you betrayed her on this one point.

You once asked her why your blood didn’t match hers, and she only shook her head and said it didn’t work like that, which didn’t make  _ any _ sense at all! But no matter how much you pressed, she refused to explain further, and you were left to sulk instead.

You sit on a large rock, on the edge where it crops out slightly and you can let your feet swing and dangle only inches from the ground. A fire crackles at your feet, warming your toes as you kick off your shoes. Porrim gives you a disapproving look for that, but you’re settled down for the night and you don’t see why you have to wear them. They make your feet feel all squished and tight, and when they’re off, you can wiggle your toes until they crack and let dirt and wind tickle your soles. You don’t think Porrim understands that this is the best feeling in the world and that wearing shoes is stupid. Wearing shoes is only okay when you’re walking on things that hurt, like rocks and sticks, which you do a lot. But Porrim wants you to wear them  _ all _ the time because she’s always wanting you to go, go, go. She doesn’t even know where you’re going! You keep asking, hoping she’s made up her mind, but her answer is always the same. “We’ll know when we get there.” You’re not satisfied with this, and you don’t think you ever will be.

A small, skinned beast is roasting slowly over the fire. You had watched Porrim catch it within minutes of setting up camp. It was rare for you to be left alone, and for now, you didn’t mind it. You liked Porrim, and as much as she worried, she loved in equal measure, and as long as she was around, you felt safe. 

“I want to be called Kankri,” you say, breaking the silence. You’re pretty certain you see Porrim startle slightly.

“Kankri?” she asks, looking up at you with a furrow in her brow, the shadows on her face drastic and flickering in the firelight. 

You nod emphatically, gripping tightly to the rock as you lean forward. “Yeah! Kankri Vantas!”

Her mouth twitches, and you lean back as you try to figure out if it’s a sign of disapproval, or if she’s trying to hide a smile.

“Where did this come from?” she asks. Her voice is cool and collected, and does nothing to betray her opinion on the matter, making you huff slightly.

“That’s what the lady called me,” you reply.

At this, her head shoots up to stare at you in terrified shock. She raises to her feet in a swift move that has you freezing and looking around for danger.

“What lady?” she asks Her voice is still calm, but there is a low hiss to it that has your skin itching. 

“Th-the lady in my dreams,” you reply, frantically running through your mind on what you could have possibly done wrong when you realize that her focus is intensely on you and not on any approaching potential danger.

This seems to be the right answer, as she visibly relaxes and steps closer to you, pulling you close to her chest where you can hear her bloodpusher thumping quickly to keep up with her nerves. You let it happen and wrap your own arms around her waist, letting your eyes close. You know this helps her calm down, and you would be a liar to say you didn’t enjoy it as well. 

After a long moment, she pulls away and holds you at arm’s length with that look that you have learned translates to ‘what am I going to do with you, child’ in the most loving of ways. It’s the look she gives you whenever you do something that frightens her, and then she realizes that everything is actually not as bad as it seems and you are really still alright.

“So you want to call yourself Kankri Vantas because that’s what a woman called you in your dreams?” she asks, her mouth quirking in disbelief.

You nod slowly. 

“Did the woman say anything else?”

You shrug, glancing toward the fire before looking up at Porrim’s eyes. 

“Not really. She was nice, and pretty like you. I think she was a jadeblood. She had metal stuck to her face and swirls on her body. She said ‘You quit that Kankri Vantas!’ and she made the same face you make when I take off my shoes.”

Porrim pushes her lips together and gives a hum of thought before letting out a small sigh that lets you know you’ve won. Though you’re not sure if you were ever competing.

“I suppose it is about time you had a name,” she says, and returns to the fire, pulling the small roasted beast from the coals. “Kankri Vantas it is, then.” She hands you the meat with a soft warning to be careful of the heat.

You are warmed by her approval and smile as you blow on the edge of the creature before digging in.

She smiles back, a rare, genuine one that reaches her eyes and make them squint and sparkle and let you know that there is no way that she would ever let anything bad happen to you ever. It reminds you that you would do the same. 

Porrim never lets you forget how cruel the world is, but it will be the end of you if you let it touch her and that perfect smile.

 

~~~

 

You have only been to the city once before. It was over a sweep ago, and Porrim held your hand in a death grip, but you didn’t dare tell her how much it hurt your fingers as she constantly pulled you to a fro to avoid the steps of much larger trolls that you can only see around the edges off your grey hood. 

It is terrifying, being surrounded by so many large bodies when you have been raised accustomed to the open expanse off the wilderness. 

Despite Porrim’s extra caution and attempts to avoid the trolls on the busy streets, you were hit by a bulky troll from behind, who spat at you for being in the way before continuing on with his conversation. The force is enough to force you to your knees and immediately you feel the sting of a scrape on your palm as you reach out to catch yourself. 

You lift your hand to look at the palm, and before you even have a chance to register the blood, long fingers are curling around it and Porrim is lifting you into her arms. You only catch a glimpse of her face as she takes you off running, but it’s enough to see the feral protectiveness in her eyes. You watch over her shoulder as heads turn and snarls pick up on the faces of several trolls. Unable to watch what you are sure will happen next you bury your face into Porrim’s shoulder, gripping the back of her dress with small hands. Panic and terror was heavy in your breaths, and you don’t know if it is  your own, or the fear that Porrim radiates as she flees with you from the city.

Somehow, by some miracle, you made it out safely, but Porrim cried that day, when she thought you were asleep and you hadn’t been back since.

Until today, that is, when the dirt road you had been following lead you to the entrance of a new city. You could tell, even from the distance, that it is extremely large, and to go around would take days, if not longer. Still, you have to ask because, you’re scared and you don’t want to go.

“Can’t we go around?” 

Porrim shakes her head, heavy and resigned, and you get a metallic taste in your mouth as your anxiety almost becomes tangible on your tongue. 

“It’s far too risky. We don’t know what kind of guards or highbloods are lingering around the outskirts of the city. It would be far too suspicious. We have to go through, if we are to avoid attention.”

She says this firmly, and you know there’s no arguing her on this point. 

“But last time--” you say, before her grip around your hand cuts you off.

“I’m aware, Kankri, but it can’t be helped.” she lets out a heavy sigh, and the sound makes your bloodpusher give a slow, painful beat against your ribs as she kneels down in front of you, tugging your hood up over small horns that are half hidden in a mass of black hair.

She runs soft fingers over your cheek and holds your face with her head tilted, a sad look in her eyes that makes you want to scream.

“Listen, Kankri, I need you to be cautious, even more than you have been your entire life. I’ll be with you the entire time, but you can’t let them know you’re scared. Walk with confidence. You belong and they must know that. Don’t be frightened, my dear. Take my hand and we’ll make it through together. Just remember, confident but cautious, and we’ll do just fine. Do this, and we’ll be just fine.”

She tugs on your hood one final time, forcing your head to bob slightly before she lets her hand slide to the back of your head and pushes your forehead to her lips. Her words are a lie, she doesn’t believe them, you know she doesn’t and you don’t either. But that doesn’t matter as her hand slips into yours and grips it tightly. You have to believe that they’re true, despite everything that tells you otherwise, because if you don’t, you have nothing. It is a silent and mutual understanding that you’ve had since you first learned the dangers of the world.

She stands again, and her height almost feels like a loss as her face grows more distant from your own. You look up at her and her face sets into that prideful yet emotionless mask she puts on around strangers, and you do your best to relax your own face into the same expression, all the while stepping closer to her as you head into the city.

It is much like you remember, loud and angry, with a lot of yelling and pushing and dodging around the legs of much taller trolls. However, this time your hand isn’t aching in Porrim’s grip, your shoulder isn’t sore from all of her tugging, and you both proceed at a much calmer pace. You allow yourself the chance to look around and really take in the trolls and the buildings, as you didn’t have the chance to before. What had been in your memories a blur of grey and panic, was now clearing into a bustle of trolls and lusii. A lady with olive green eyes and twisting horns tries to sell dresses to trolls that wouldn’t even give her a courtesy glance. Behind finned highbloods walked a variety of low bloods in chains. Mustard colored blood dripped from the nose of one, and you stare for a moment before realizing that he was staring back, and you look away quickly. He had been not much older than you, covered in bruises, his wrists crusted with yellow where the chains rubbed him raw. 

After your whole life learning to hide your blood, the idea that he didn’t even seem to care that his nose was bleeding is shocking to you. You want to ask Porrim about it. She had told you about the hemocaste and how people were treated very badly just for the color of their blood, but she never gave you a satisfactory answer as to  _ why _ , only that it was the reason no one must ever know what color your blood is. But when you look up at her to speak, she shakes her head, and you close your mouth again. Later, then.

In your dreams, trolls are kind. They help each other, and everything is balanced and bright. There is no blood, and everyone smiles. You only get snippets, a voice that almost seems familiar, or a smile that reminds you of someone you’ve never met, but you get enough to know that it’s a better place. A place that Alternia could be, if only trolls would attempt to be peaceful. You just don’t understand why it  _ can’t _ be that way.

The slave disappears into the crowd, but there are more to take its place, their blood hue made obvious by bruises and cuts that scatter their bodies,  and by  the ring around the pupil of their eyes. Eyes that  would vary from haunted, to unforgiving, to just empty. You  look at your feet, unable to look any longer, as your stomach starts hurting, like that time you ate those berries when Porrim wasn’t looking. 

There is a shout and your head shoots up. It’s louder and angrier than the rest of the hubbub of the city, and it’s enough to have you searching curiously for the source.

There is a troll pointing at you with a long claw and cerulean blue eyes that show nothing but suspicion from under his hat. He shouts again, but all you catch is another ‘hey!’ before his words are lost as he was forced back by a large lusus crossing the street. 

“Come along, Dear,” Porrim says, tugging at  your arm. She seems calm and unbothered, but there is a hint of urgency in her voice that you know well. You’ve heard it before.

You stumble slightly, looking over your shoulder as the blueblood troll shoves the lusus out of the way and stomps after you. You look up at Porrim, questioning and frightened, but her face is as stoic as when you first entered the city, so you follow suit and do your best to keep up with her quickened pace.

You take several turns that veer you off your initial course—which had been an attempt to take a straight shot through town with no interruptions and no distractions. 

You don’t dare look over your shoulder again as you speed walk through an alley and out into another busy street. You stay close to Porrim as you push yourself into the stream of people and lose yourself in the crowd. It’s not until she lets out a breath that holds the hint of a sigh and relaxes to a much more natural and casual pace that you allow yourself to look back to see if you’re being followed. 

There is no one chasing you, and that is both comforting and unsettling at the same time. 

“Who was that?” you ask, trying to keep your voice down, but still speaking up enough to be heard.

Porrim shakes her head, focusing ahead as her eyes pick out the smoothest path out of the city. “I don’t know. Probably some Gamblignant from the dress, could sell us both for a hefty amount if he had caught us.”

“But how did he know? He didn’t see my blood.” 

Porrim tensed for a brief moment before realizing that no one had overheard—but it is enough to have you gnawing at your lip. 

You twist your body to avoid running into a sleight troll woman with harshly angled horns, and once they pass Porrim speaks again.

“It doesn’t matter. If he caught us, he would find out. He probably just found it suspicious that a child and adult troll are walking together without a lusus or visible chains.”

You let this information settle with a shiver over your body. You’re starting to like the city even less, and you didn’t think that was possible. 

“I don’t feel good,” you say, placing a hand over your stomach. 

She frowns down at you and gives your hand a small squease. “We’ll be out soon,” is all the reassurance she can give as you focus back on making it out of the city without incident.

It’s dangerously close to dawn when you finally reach the outskirts of the city and the buildings start to sparse out. It’s much quieter here, where there aren’t as many trolls. Those  that have been out are turning in for the day. From here, you can see the road stretching out of town, and you find yourself holding your breath and you pull ahead of Porrim slightly in your eagerness to get out. She widens her stride and you can feel her pulse in her fingertips curled around the back of your hand, fluttering and excited.

A cry causes you to stop in your steps, and you look around for the source of the sound. The area is quiet enough now that the cry comes as a shock, and it’s pained enough to be a startling contrast to all the angry sounds you had grown used to the last several hours.

Porrim tries to pull you along, but it only takes you a moment to spot the group—three high bloods that have backed a lowblood into the corner. The lowblood looks like he’s hardly standing, using the corner where the walls join to support himself. A high blood with tall horns that y sharply about half way up yanks the low blood up by the front of his shirt and shakes him, knocking his head against the stone wall behind him. The lowblood coughs up burgundy colored blood, and you let out a small cry that is quickly muffled by Porrim’s hand.

“We have to help him!” You cry in a harsh whisper, looking at herwith a pleading gaze.

“We can’t, Darling.”

“Why?!” You’re tired. Tired of her telling you no, telling you that you can’t, telling you that this is just how things are. You want answers.  _ Need _ answers. Why won’t she ever explain?!

“There is nothing we can do, Kankri.” Her voice is pleading as well, begging you to understand— but how can you when she just wont explain?

“But you rescued me! You can rescue him!” 

She looks at you with the saddest look you’ve ever seen on her face. There are tears brimming in her eyes, but there is no way you can feel guilty, not when this is all her fault.

She crouches down in front of you and rubs your cheek with a thumb, but you look away to prove a point. You are angry, and you want her to know it. You refuse to be soothed by her loving touches or her sad gaze. You are angry, and you are going to stay that way until she helps the troll.

There is a sigh from her lips, heavy and resigned, and her hand drops from your cheek. You look over at her despite yourself, and her lips are thinned and pursed, a tense look around her eyes that make it look like she is deep in conflicted thought.  

“I don’t know how to explain this to you, Kankri. I don’t know how to make you understand. Sometimes things just… are.” She lets out a frustrated sound. “I helped you because I knew you wouldn’t survive. We’ve talked about this before—the world is cruel, darling, and the high bloods will hurt just to laugh at the pain. low bloods are enslaved, killed for such arbitrary reasons... I knew I had to protect you. I don’t know, there was something…” She shakes her head and continues on. “We can’t save everybody, Kankri. I know you want to. I want to as well, but there are just too many in this world. we can’t help them all.”

“But we can help this one,” you whisper. You’re sniffling, reduced to tears tinted red as one or two escape down your cheeks. 

She quickly wipes them away and shakes her head. “I’m sorry Darling. I’m sorry, but you’re all I have now. You’re the  _ only _ thing that’s important to me, and if  _ anything _ were to happen to you…” She cuts off and pulls you close, smothering you into her shoulder. You cling to her, grasping her dress into your small hands, pulling at threads with sharp claws. 

“You’re strong,” You say, muffled by her shoulder. “You can take them, you can make it stop.”

“But I can’t. I know you think I can, but I can’t.” she pulls away and she once again wipes away your tears, not bothering with her own. 

There are no more words. She takes your hand as you both walk past the group of high bloods, now laughing over the slumped body of the burgundyblood. You force yourself to look away, feeling so angry that it makes your stomach hurt. 

In the sweeps that followed, you came to realize that  _ that _ was your breaking point. You were too young to realize it at the time, but that was when you realized that enough was enough. If Alternia was so bad, you would follow Porrim’s example, the one she set when she ran away from her duties to protect you from a terrible fate. You would only be one troll, but the older you grew, the more you would realize how much words could influence the masses. You would spread a message of peace. you would tell people of your dreams and the possibility of a world where the hemocaste was one of camaraderie, not violence and power—and fate willing, your message would spread beyond even you, challenging  and  _ changing  _ the world long after your death..  _ That _ was your dream.  _ That _ was your mission.

Even if you didn’t know it yet.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like this chapter? Leave a comment! Next chapter should be up in a weekish. Questions, comments, concerns? Hit me up on my tumblr: rogueofpans.tumblr.com


	5. Chapter Four: I Have This Breath and I Hold It Tight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In misery there is hope.

 

You liked to think, if circumstances were different (namely if you weren’t constantly riding a fine line between fearing for your life and not fearing for it as much as that of others’), you would be a writer. You would write tales of love that withstands any trial. Love that lasts after death, love that can withstand any sort of vacillation--and if you dared, a love that expanded quadrants all together. Or perhaps you would write just the opposite; stories of love that ended due to the failure of serendipity, due to faults too great to conquer, to painful separation that tore souls in two. It was good to have variety, after all, and while you like to think on the positive side concerning love, you weren't a young grub, naive to the harshities of the world you lived in. You knew that sometimes quadrants failed, whether it was a fault of serendipity or the trolls that misread the signs and pushed too hard on something that wasn’t there.

But the circumstances are the same as they have been your entire life; harsh and unforgiving, overseen by a ruler that was both uncaring and yet so very aware of the movements of her kingdom that she would cull anyone who even dared to  _ think  _ of her in a manner that she didn’t approve of. So instead, you’ve been travelling, doing odd jobs and trying to keep attention off of yourself. Your blood was far too low to be making a name for yourself. If trolls knew who you were, it would only result in tragedy. You weren’t a bad troll, however mischievous you could be at times. All you were doing was what any other troll on this planet was doing: trying to get by.

Settling onto a high branch that overlooked the road that led for several miles in both directions, you used the pink tinted light of the larger moon to write. Sometimes, someone would occasionally pass below you, none the wiser to the troll perched high above their heads. Sometimes, when words would elude you in some form or another, you would watch them walk below you and wonder what their stories were, where they were going to or coming from, and most importantly, what type of love the world had offered them. 

The woman passing below you now, for example, her quick steps distracts you from your writing as you peer down through the leaves at her. She walks with agency and paranoid glances, so you imagine that she is going somewhere that she isn’t really meant to be. The accent in her clothes speaks of high blood, most lowbloods only display blood color out of necessity--to hide it is suspicious and calls for culling. She’s a blueblood, from what you could tell. ou would have to get closer to guess the shade. As she disappears further down the road, you fail to catch any more details about her and are forced to make up the rest on your own. You think a moment, watching her slowly fade to a blur before coming up with a story. She has a moirail, but they’re somewhere in the rustblood caste. She has to meet them in secret, or risk getting them culled--and knowing this society, she would be forced to do it with her own hands. You flinch at this thought. It  is a fact of life, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it or let it invade your fantasies.

Getting back on track you swing your feet below you and lean against the trunk. The Moirail is younger than her. Their blood is low, but their wisdom makes up for it. When they’re together, time means nothing. Their lifespans are meaningless. They balance each other perfectly. The rustblood soothes the blueblood’s paranoia, and in return the blueblood helps the rustblood through emotional outbursts that would have gotten them culled sweeps ago. 

You sigh and slump slightly against the trunk a little more, letting your eyes close. It’s nice to believe that good things happened in the world occasionally, as unrealistic as it was. If you have nothing else, you have your stories. Sometimes, that is just enough to make it all okay.

 

~~~

 

You wake from the cat nap you hadn’t realized that you had fallen into to the sound of a loud voice and murmurs. You take a moment to stretch, nearly falling off your branch as you do so. With a small squeak you grab on and balance yourself, breathing deeply to calm the bloodpusher in your chest.

Your fingers still tingling slightly from the fear of almost falling to your death, you lean precariously out over your branch to observe the crowd that’s gathered below.

Well,  _ crowd  _ might be a bit of an overstatement--it’s more of a handful of trolls, listening with interest and uncertainty to whatever the troll directly below you is saying. 

He speaks of peace, visions and an impossible harmony among trolls. He has a sincerity that tells you how much he really believes in what he is saying, and an urgency as he begs the trolls to practice what he preaches.

The speech goes on for another hour or so, and more people gather below you to listen. Nobody notices you. Nobody bothered looking. You don’t mind either way. You settle into a more comfortable position, entranced by the words and by the troll himself. He’s short, barely taller than yourself, but it’s hard to tell from here--and even so, you have yet to reach your full height. You can’t see his face from here, only a dark robe with the hood lowered to reveal the tips of small horns barely visible through the mass of hair, and lean arms that gesticulate as he talks. 

The dichotomy of his wise words and youthful voice draws in both you and the crowd. As the sky threatens dawn, the crowd dwindles to just the speaker and the jadeblood that stands off to the side. She comes up to him with a small, gentle smile, and places a hand on his shoulder with a tenderness you have only seen in red-quadrant trolls. You tilt your head curiously as she murmurs something softly to him, and they head off, presumably to find shelter. It’s hard to tell with so little evidence, but it doesn’t seem like they’re quadranted--but they could easily be pale. 

They have known each other for quite sometime, that much is obvious. Perhaps they met in some bar on the outskirts of a city. No, the jadeblood seemed too civilized for something like that. Perhaps the market, then, a generic, busy market in a large city thousands of miles away. Someplace you can blend in and turn invisible. They don’t like to attract attention. They’re like you, in that sense! They like to stay on the outskirts and observe. It’s the jadeblood that got the redblood preaching. A sort of moirailegence that coaxed him out of his shell and gor him talking to the masses with that philosophy of his that’s so inspiring. She heard him talking about one of his visions and told him that he had to tell anybody they could. She really believed in him, always had, and now they are like you, travelling around and telling stories. They have been doing this for years, and plan to do this for many more. You wonder if the other will continue if one of them dies first. It’s a morbid thought, but a bit romantic, if you think about it the right way. It’s always best to put a positive twist on things if you can!

You swiftly drop from the branches, the leaves rustling and falling around you as you land lightly on the ground only seconds later. 

The couple is out of sight now, and you’re pressing it a little close to getting back to what you would call home for the night. Your lusus is probably worried sick, pacing nervous circles into the floor, making those sad little keening noises she does when she gets upset. That wouldn’t do, certainly. She knows you are a fierce predator, and that you can handle yourself just fine.

You can’t exactly use your claws to fight the sun, but damn if you wouldn’t try if given the chance! You are always ready to rise to a challenge, after all!

Clutching your notebook to your chest, you jog back towards town, and find the abandoned building you had left your lusus in hours ago. 

She nearly pounces on you as you close the door behind you. Her purring reverberates through the entire house, and her desperate need to rub up against you and be close, sniffing and nudging to make sure you are unharmed is almost overwhelming--but by now you are used to it. She’s been doing it since you were a grub, but you will admit that she has tapered off the coddling as you’ve grown older and started venturing out more on your own within the last few sweeps.

Standing still, you let her do a few pressing circles around you, letting your hand run through her coat as she passes in front. Once she’s satisfied, she takes a seat in front of you and gives a questioning, rumbling noise, and you shake your head in response.

“No, I made it in time.” You reach forward and scratch behind her ears, letting your hand trail down and rub along the side of her face and then down under her chin. She pushes her head into your hand. “I’ve got more stories. Would you like to hear? I’m going to write them down while we eat and then I can read before bed,” you say, resting your forehead against hers and closing your eyes for a moment as she gives a quiet, comforting trill.

“I missed you too,” you say just as softly, giving her another full-handed pet at the base of her neck before wrapping both arms around the furry mass and hugging her tightly. “I would be so lonely without you!”

Your lusus makes a sound that is rather close to a yowl, and you giggle, pulling away to look her in the eyes and perhaps squishing her face a little, causing her jowls to fold and raise, revealing the points of her teeth. “I know I say that all the time, but it’s true, and if it’s true, why not say it? Now leave me alone and let me write, or you won’t get your story after dinner!”

She snorts, spattering you slightly with something wet and a little slimy before turning away and heading to the corner to tear into a recent kill. 

You wipe your face and head to the half-broken table, where you lay out your notebook, pull out your pen, and begin to write. 

After several minutes with only the comforting sound of tearing and squishing flesh to fill the silence, you sigh and look up from your writing.

“I think I’m done here,” you say to the wall in front of you. The squelching of meat from bone stops and you know that your lusus is looking at you attentively, even before you turn around to look at her.

“I’m tired of this place. I think we should find somewhere else to explore.”

The cat-lusus makes a questioning noise, her mouth opening wide as she tilts her head to the side.

“I know it’s only been a couple of days, but this place wasn’t very interesting, even from the beginning. I’m ready for a change of scenery.” You won’t admit to yourself that that prophet is still on your mind, you won’t admit that you are dying to know what he is doing now.

_ Mirr. _ The sound is somewhat weary and resigned. She is getting old and a bit bitter over moving so much, but how can you help the youthful energy of a huntress that courses through your veins and the urge to go wherever your whims take you? It still has nothing to do with following that troll.

You give her a bright, toothy smile and turn back to your writing as your lusus returns to her own task of dividing meat from blue-stained bone.

Hours later, when dinner is finished and you both have had your fill, your lusus curls up into a corner and you snuggle against her with your notebook, yawning. 

“Ready?” The small nudge and warm, wet breath on your ear serves as an answer, and your lusus crosses her paws and rests her head atop them.

You snuggle a little deeper into her fur and prop your notebook against your knees. You take a breath and let yourself settle before beginning to read. Your lusus’ breath grows heavy and steady, a clear sign she’s asleep, but you finish the story anyways before closing the notebook and rolling to your side to stroke her face and tangle your fingers into the white fur at her shoulder as you drift off yourself, warm and at peace, even despite the building that falls apart around you.

 

~~~

 

You find him again. You weren’t really looking for him--at least, you won’t admit that you were. Why would you be? Still, it doesn’t surprise you when you see him standing on an overturned crate, arms waving as he speaks. This is a bit off the main path, but still closer to the in-town boundaries then he was before. Did he get braver in the last few days, or was he never as fearful of culling as you had assumed the first time you saw him? Regardless, you find yourself sitting on a rock at the back of the crowd before you even realize you moved. 

You listen intently, your hand and pen moving almost on their own as you quickly record every word that leaves the redblood’s lips. The jadeblood stands behind him, watching him intently, but occasionally you’ll see her eyes flicker around the crowd and beyond. If she notices you, she makes no indication of it. You have yet to decide if you want her to or not.

Given the earliness of the day, the troll finishes his presentation long before the sun starts to rise, and you disperse with the murmuring crowd. You try to catch what the listeners are saying, but it’s rather trite. Some fear for their own safety after listening to something so blasphemous, but no one is concerned for the one who actually  _ spoke  _ the words. Once or twice you can hear words of someone who might be swayed to the redblooded troll’s ideals. 

There is a lot of talk about his blood. Just like any troll, his clothes are lined with fabric the color of his blood. But many think it’s too bright to be burgundy. Others just brush it off as trick of the light. ‘Your eyes have been failing you for sweeps,’ one troll says. 

You found yourself wondering much the same thing. You had been calling him redblood in your head, perhaps a somewhat unconscious means of balancing the debate on whether he was actually a burgundyblood, or some sort of mutant-blooded troll--which in itself was a crazy idea. No troll with  _ any  _ blood deviation from the spectrum should be able to live to this age. It simply isn’t possible.

You don’t follow as the troll and his jadeblood partner disappear between the buildings. You hardly notice that they’re gone.

That night, you read what you wrote of his teachings to your lusus as you fall asleep.

 

~~~

 

It takes several more ‘accidental’ run-ins before you finally admit you’re consciously seeking him out. You always find yourself at the back of the crowd, diligently writing every word the redblooded troll speaks, but with every sermon you find yourself sitting closer to the front of the crowd. You know that the jadeblood notices you, but still she does not acknowledge your presence. For now, you do not mind. You are perfectly content just to listen.

 

~~~

 

You’ve lost count of how many speeches, stories and lessons you’ve listened to, but you know you’ve had to get a new notebook. The one you’re on now is almost full, the first worn and falling apart at the edges from use, both from writing and early morning reading. 

He’s finally noticed you and there’s a sense of pride that comes unbidden. You sit at the very front of the crowd, practically at his feet now. You never say a word, but the acknowledging smile he gives you is enough.

You return home that morning, a renewed glee in your chest, causing your footsteps to flutter with the excited rhythm of your bloodpusher. You tell your lusus about the encounter with controlled energy and she replies with a tired but prideful growl. 

“How about we hunt some fish tonight?  It's been so long since we’ve had seafood and we’re right on the coast now!”

The cat raises her head to look at you wearily. She wants to protest, you recognize that look in her eyes, but she loves fish just as much as you and it’s such a rare commodity that she wouldn’t dare pass it up. 

“How long has it been since we’ve been hunting together?” you ask absently, closing the door behind you and walking beside her with a hand buried in the thick fur of her neck. There was once a time where you were small enough and she was strong enough to carry you just behind her shoulders. You would bound at exhilarating speeds, and you would fill her with trust as you closed your eyes and buried your face in her fur, simply breathing in her scent, listening to the sounds of her heavy yet controlled breathing, the quick and heavy thump of her bloodpusher and feeling the ripple of muscle rhythmically move against your cheek. You are both much too old to indulge in such childish whimsy now, and she doesn’t have the strength anymore. Still, there are times where those memories fill your dreams, and those are the days you don’t want to wake up.

You arrive at the beach with plenty of time to spare, so you take your time and stroll leisurely, enjoying the sensation of water lapping at your feet. Eventually, you remove your shoes and carry them in one hand. Sweeps ago, your lusus would have bounded off and around, attacking the waves, diving headlong into the crashing water. She’d disappear for a few terrifying moments under the surface, before reemerging with a large fish between sharp teeth, bleeding some high blood blue or purple. It would only take once, before you went bounding after her, your cries gleeful, attempting to mimic her as your leapt and bound at the waves as if they were feared enemies, set on destroying the sand hive you had created on shore. You rarely were able to catch any food in the short time you spent by the sea as a much younger troll, but the more you look back on it, the less you think that mattered to either of you, then or now.

Now, your lusus lopes beside you at a steady gait, not really dragging her feet, but not bounding ahead either. You enjoy the company, even if it makes you a little sick with nostalgia for younger times. 

You finally pull to a stop and walk up the shore a little to place your shoes a safe distance from the pull of the water, before pulling your shirt off over your head to and drop it in a heap on top of your shoes. 

Your lusus waits down at the edge of the water for you, ever patient and diligent as you make your way back down to her. 

You give her a smile and a scratch behind the ear for good measure before bounding into the sea and diving beneath the waves.

Your eyes are not designed to see underwater like a violet or fuschiablood seadweller, but you force them open regardless, allowing yourself time to adjust to the sting of salt and the murky blur of the water that envelops you. 

It takes a couple tries to finally catch a white-scaled fish the size of your head. You shake your head in a failed attempt to get your hair out of your face as you tread water, the fish faking death in an attempt to get you to release it. You won’t fall for its tricks, though! You’re smarter than the fish and you will not let go, even as you grab it around the base of its tail and haul it to shore.

Your lusus is doing its own hunting closer to where the water meets the sand, but it doesn’t look like it’s found anything. That doesn’t surprise you, considering how far out you had to go yourself before you even found a fish to hunt in the first place. 

You let out a whoop of triumph and hold the struggling fish over your head to show your lusus. 

At first the yowl she gives off is one of pride and excitement. Good catch! She calls as she shakes her head proudly. However, it is followed by the sound of a distress and distrust and you find yourself turning around as quickly as you can when treading water and squint at the horizon.

A ship cruises fast through the waves. Not unusual in and of itself--this is the ocean, after all. Lots of people go sailing, and fleets of ships are used for fighting and shipping. However, there is something unsettling about this one, and it takes you a moment to pinpoint it.

You are on a secluded portion of the shore, out of range of any sort of port or docking area. As you watch, the ship grows steadily closer. The uneasiness in your stomach pushes you forward with repressed panic. If the ship and the trolls on it want anything, it can’t be good if they choose to come so close to shore in such a private area. 

And they’re approaching way too fast.

You run to your lusus, who has already made it to the relative safety of the sand, with slipping and stumbling footsteps the minute your feet can touch ground. The fish you had caught had been lost in your frantic swimming, but that is the last thing on your mind now. It won’t survive long, anyways, not with the wounds your claws had given it.You swallow. Your throat feels raw, as if you had swallowed the seawater. You drip, the water around your feet a dark and muddy brown, and you shiver, but you can’t say for certain that that’s only because of the chill of being soaked to the bone.

“We should leave,” you say as steadily as possible, your eyes never leave the ship., You find your way back to your shirt and shoes. The ship is close enough now that you can start to make out details. You didn’t think they could move that fast. You admit you’re terrified, if only silently to yourself. 

You start slightly as a cold nose nudges you and you look down to see your lusus holding your shoes and shirt in her mouth. You take them without thanking her and your gaze is already on the ship again before you have your fingers wrapped around them completely.

The ship is looming now, a massive piece of work that has all the telltale signs of a battle cruiser. This was clearly no cargo ship--and the flag flies high with the zig-zag sign of a violet blooded troll. The figure standing at the bow has a massive harpoon resting against his shoulder and a cape that billows in the sea breeze, the collar spiking out around the back of his head in a fashion that simulated the dreaded Imperial Drones. A shudder runs through your entire body as you spin on a heel and try to leave as calmly as you can--which isn’t calmly at all. Your feet dig and slip in the wet sand and you feel like you make no progress whatsoever. 

You refuse to look at the ship now. Your vision is blurring with your breath and all you can think is DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! You don’t know what the troll wants. You don’t have time to create a story in your mind, this time. You don’t want to know the truth, and the panic is too thick. 

It happens between one breath and the next, in that space between the beats of your bloodpusher, and before you even have time to register it, a projectile  _ wooshes  _ past your head.

A scream erupts in almost slow motion and your ears feel like they are filled with thick blood. It takes you a moment to realize that it’s your own scream, sounding muffled and distant as you watch your lusus fall heavy to the sand, a harpoon jutting out of her shoulder. Olive blood immediately begins to stain the slosh of sand around the white body and it blends in so well, you can hardly tell there’s any blood at all, if not for the stark stream trailing from the hole in her shoulder and streaming down like paint over white fur. 

You don’t know whether you are moving or standing still, but you are suddenly by your lusus’ side, whispering nonsense words into her ear, running your hand over her head and neck. It’s supposed to be soothing, but your hands are too quick and stuttering, unable to find a steady rhythm in which to calm her. You realize it’s not for her, then, it’s for you, because , she’s already so still, her chest heaving in shuddering gasps. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” you mutter, your voice a keening whine as your fingers tug at ruffled tufts of fur, as if that will get the creature to open her eyes again. “Just rest. t’ll be okay.”

The rise and fall of your lusus’ flanks grows fainter, but part of you refuses to even notice. If you can hold onto a hope that she’ll last, you won’t have to let go. 

“We still have to catch more fish,” you sob. Your tears stain her fur, but you don’t bother to stop them. “We can go home and I’ll tell you the most beautiful story I’ve ever told. I’ll tell you the story of a troll and her lusus and how that lusus taught her to hunt and climb and embrace freedom and positivity whenever she could find it.”

The lusus is eerily still now. You let out a wail that burns you down to your soul and you bury your face in her neck, clutching at her with claws that dig into skin and draw more blood. “Please, no, I’m not ready!” She  _ can’t  _ go yet. You still have so many more sweeps, still had more beaches to visit, more world to explore, and so, so many stories to tell her. “I never got to tell you the story of that yellowblood I saw at the market, or the tealblood leaving the library sweeps ago, or the-the story o-of the lusus that helped its charge f-find their matesprit.”

Your breath is hitching. You give up on talking all together, your mouth now filled with pieces of fur that you don’t bother removing. Your cries fall heavily into silence like a body sinking to the bottom of the sea, cold and slow, breathless and inevitable, sinking further and further into darkness, knowing you will eventually hit solid ground, but knowing the pain and pressure will kill you before you get there. 

“Well, ain’t this just  _ pathetic _ .” 

The voice is scathing and salty, roughened by salt-tainted winds and haughty enough to think its royalty. 

Your head whips around fast enough it’s a surprise it stays on your neck. You snarl at the tall troll standing with an unloaded harpoon gun hanging from his hand at his hip. 

He smirks, unintimidated by your attempt to make him back off.

“It’s just a lusus. There are thousands more. Now run along, before I have time to reload and there’s one more meal for the sea.”

You shoot up and launch at him with teeth and claws bared to angry points. The look on his face says he was  _ not  _ prepared for this, but he turns his body just inches out of your attack range with ease that says otherwise. He’s young, for a violet blood. A sort of baby face that only came with the youthfulness of the first few decades. Honestly, you don’t think he could have been much older than you, but it is an absolute certainty that he’ll outlive you, and right now, you are  _ ferociously  _ determined to even out that difference.

You spin on the sand with another snarl. You somehow manage not to slip as you pounce at him from all fours, sand spraying, andhe grabs you by the wrists and flips you onto your back. He’s looking a little annoyed now and there’s a vicious satisfaction in that as you roll into another crouch, watching him with a calculating eye. You’ve been too rash, blinded by the fury enveloping everything you once were. But the flip was just enough to knock your head back on a little straighter. You were raised to fight, to survive, and  _ fuck  _ this guy if he thinks he can win. You faint to the right and then quickly dart to his other side. He starts to fall for it enough just enough for your claws to land in flesh, but he’s quick enough that the slash that was aimed for his throat ends up dragging across his face. They stop just before his bottom jaw line and the incensed snarl he gives only pushes out the blood faster in trails down his cheek  and leak into his eye.

The blood blinds him. You have the advantage now. You attempt to keep your confidence from your face, letting that anger you’re feeling override all other visible emotion. It would do no good for him to be able to read your intentions--he was obviously no stranger to the art of fighting and playing hunter, despite the fact that it was clear he was out of his element at such a close range.

Your next few moments are a blur, but he doesn’t underestimate you anymore, and every swipe misses by a hair’s breadth, or snags on clothing. Soon he is tattered from head to toe, his cape in two long pieces down his back and a sleeve is close to falling off all together, but only a few pieces of skin reveal the disgusting violet blood beneath. Whatever happened to apex predator? You’re angry at yourself for your inadequacy. You’re letting yourself down, you’re letting  _ her  _ down. This would  _ not. Do. _ You refuse to acknowledge that his physical strength and youth and taunting look gleaming through the blood in his eyes gives him any power over you.

You inhale slowly, circling him, letting the breath leave you in a steady stream. He had dropped the harpoon gun several feet away, the weapon much too large and clunky to hold onto as he attempts to avoid your lightning-fast attacks. He wasn’t quick enough to use it as a shield either and so it had been abandoned to the sands. Good. You want that thing as far away from you and your lusus as physically possible. If you could shred it and send it sailing into a black hole, you would. 

He keeps one eye open to watch you as you circle each other. He’s getting twitchy, making to block attacks that you don’t even think about feigning. Finally, you dart at him, ducking down to avoid his swinging arm and then moving back up in a sharp movement to aim at his throat. This was a mistake, however, because when you dodge one arm (his own attempt at a distraction you hate to admit actually  _ works _ ) the other comes up from below, grabs your wrist as the tip of your claws just barely break the surface of skin at his throat. In one swift movement, the other hand comes back down on your shoulder as his knee comes up into your midsection. There’s a  _ crack  _ and you scream blood dripping from your mouth and pattering at his feet. You twist out of the hold with a excruciating stab of pain running through your shoulder, and you use your lower vantage point to ram him in the ribs with your good shoulder. The attack manages to catch him by surprise and he stumbles and falls. You keep with him and pin him with your knees to his hips and your claws digging into his shoulder. You pull back your bad arm, losing the pain in the thrill of knowing you were finally going to  _ end  _ this. The movement of his free arm catches your attention just in time to see the butt of the harpoon gun come flying at your face, hitting you hard across your right cheekbone and temple and knocking you to the side.

You are vaguely aware of movement, but then everything goes empty with another hit to the back of your head.

 

~~~

 

When you open your eyes again, you are very surprised to be alive at all. Part of you wishes you weren’t. You roll, every part of you throbbing and protesting as you push yourself with your good arm up onto your knees. It takes a few blinks to get your vision to focus, but eventually it does and you look around at the empty beach.

Empty.

You stand a little too quickly and your stomach threatens to become an external organ at the movement. You spin slowly, rubbing at your eyes with the back of a hand as if that would change the nothingness that surrounds you. 

It’s still dark, thank whatever gods existed for that. The violetblood didn’t kill you, probably having no use for you any longer and believing that the sun would take you. You have yet to decide whether you count this as luck or a blessing at this point because the beach is  _ empty _ and your  _ lusus is gone _ and nothing feels blessed or lucky or good and you just want to bury yourself into the sands at your feet, letting the grating granules fill your lungs, drowning in it. 

The stain your lusus might have left has been washed away by the incoming tide and so you do the one thing you have left in your body to do. You drop to your knees and  _ wail. _

The sound you make challenges any yowl or distressed roar that your lusus as ever even attempted in her lifetime. It echoes off the water and silences the crashes of the waves. It is filled with enough pain to crack the hardest gem. You are certain that it can be heard for miles and that’s  _ good _ . You want people to  _ hear _ . You want the world to know what it has done to you. You want it to know and feel your pain.

Maybe most trolls don’t react to the death of their lusus as you are. But you are not most trolls and you have made it your life mission not to be so. Most trolls don’t attempt such a positive outlook in their daily lives, most trolls don’t care about the lives of other trolls, most trolls don’t tell stories like you do, most trolls don’t have such a beloved lusus like you do-- _ did _ \--most trolls didn’t see them needlessly slaughtered without explanation, long before their time.

And so you make your misery known with howls of agony, clutching at the sand as you lift your head to the sky and scream until your throat goes raw, until it feels like it might bleed if you utter another sound.

Only then do you fall silent, eyes dry as you stare out over the pink-tinted sea, praying for the ship to return so you could tear it apart and use the pieces to shove down the throat of the violetblood. Maybe a few nails for the eyes, and for the horns you could use—

A presence behind you has you spinning around on instinct, teeth and claws bared. 

The redblooded prophet troll stands behind you, a good distance away,  _ a safe distance,  _ you note, standing in a pose that couldn’t be read as anything other than passive and nonthreatening.

You refuse to let your guard down, though, eyeing him with wary defensiveness. The jadeblood stands behind him, a few feet away, waiting for her partner to finish whatever it is that he’s attempting to do.

What  _ is _ he doing?

He doesn’t move, doesn’t smile, but his face is still pleasant.

“You’re the one that is always writing at my sermons, correct?” 

The question comes as a surprise, and for a moment you drop your guard. You were expecting something more along the lines of what all the noise was about, but if he is curious, he doesn’t show it.

You nod slowly, and that allows the smallest of smiles to turn up the corners of his mouth. It is oddly… comforting and you find yourself relaxing further.

“I came to ask if you would like to join us.” That’s not the only thing he wants to ask about. You’re sure of it. But still, he doesn’t mention the one-troll misery session.

“Join you?” Your voice sounds too young and foreign to your own ears, too dry and pained.

He nods and you expect him to move forward. You prepare for the movement, but it never comes. 

“You’ve been at every one of my sermons for the last few months. I’m inviting you to travel with us. We can offer you what little protection we can provide and whatever we attain shall be shared with you. It’s not much, but it’s better than being alone, is it not?”

Something in your head screams  _ he knows!  _ But the logical side of you says of  _ course he does. _ You put on a show, hoping the world would see, and in response it gave you this troll. Perhaps there wasn’t much difference.

“I…” You hesitate. But you can think of no logical reason to protest, and so you nod, still weary and in pain. “Alright.”

He smiles and finally steps forward, holding out a hand. “I’m Kankri Vantas, and my friend over there is Porrim Maryam.”

“Meulin Leijon,” you respond. His hand is warm, but it is expected of someone of such low blood, but part of your mind whispers _ not warm enough. _

His smile is welcoming and you feel the last of your misery dissipate, if only for the moment--or at least becomes a little easier to deal with. 

“It’s nice to meet you.”

 

~~~

 

You don’t stop writing. You can tell that it unsettles Kankri at first, but soon he starts sitting with you after the sermons either to edit your writing or to find things he can review in himself. You are his loyal disciple, and you throw yourself into the role that no one asked you to fill with an abandon that will probably get you killed in the end. 

At some point your friendly, almost professional relationship with Kankri became  _ more _ , and you still are unable to tell when that happened. 

Regardless, you are content. You had thought that you were content before, traveling at your leisure, relatively safe in your oliveblood status, keeping notes on the lives of trolls you never really met, reading your stories to a lusus that was dearer to you than you thought any troll could be. But that was feigning content. That was another lie the world made you believe as a young, naive troll you were. It was crushed with the death of your lusus, and you had thought it was impossible to retrieve. But after time had sanded down the wounds to nothing more than a faded blemish in your chest, you find that what you have now, what you’re feeling, this is content, there is no other word to describe it.

You don’t know how many miles you’ve traveled with Kankri and Porrim, but for all you care, you could have been walking in circles between the same three cities and it wouldn’t have mattered. You have heard stories of Kankri’s life and some of Porrim’s. Sometimes you have heard the same stories more than once. You have heard speeches upon speeches that are all set to a variation on a theme and you have been lucky enough to see Kankri develop ideas and words as you move across Alternia. His speeches grow larger and wiser, drawing a bigger and bigger crowd everywhere you go, with more variations across the hemospectrum.

You’ve told stories of your own and Kankri listens with the same rapt attention that you give his sermons, making comments that aren’t necessary but make you feel warm and appreciated all the same.

The reveal of his blood color came subtly and without fanfare. You were shocked, as any troll would be, but he trusted you to reveal his deepest secret and you accepted that as part of him. It only stood to amplify and justify everything he preached and stood for. Further validated his struggles and everything he fought so hard for to crowds of trolls that doubted him. You had cried then, overwhelmed by trust, love and admiration, and you kissed him until your tears dried. 

You don’t know what you would call you relationship, but it’s a little bit of everything. You don’t think anybody could fill any of your quadrants like Kankri does all at once. It’s that spark in his eye, the one that lets you know there’s still a child inside that wise soul, the same spark that riles up the huntress hidden in your chest and gets your blood pumping. It’s the way he’ll be so kind it makes you angry, because how can he be so innocent and so foolish, but have a wisdom that ages him thousand of sweeps, how can he be so kind that the danger of him getting culled amplifies by a hundred-million? How dare he be so foolish and reckless! But it’s that same kindness that has you melting down and revealing troubles you didn’t realize you were locking away inside. It’s the way he smiles, and the way it makes you want to kill something, while kissing hard enough that neither of you can breathe, and yet still feel like it’s not enough. No, there was no quadrant for this, no way to describe it in a way that anyone else could understand. Even Porrim, unconventional in her own right, didn’t seem capable of wrapping her thinkpan around your dynamic with Kankri. But it was as he told you once, on one of those early nights where you both rose before the sun had set and you tried to find the words to understand what you had with him. “Meulin, love, sometimes it’s best to just let things be and not wonder why or how. Just know that it is and we are blessed as such.” It was strange at the time, considering the fact that it was a stark contrast to the general philosophy he taught across Alternia, but the more you thought about it, the more it made sense. You had to pick your battles, and why fight something that was already so good? Perhaps that’s what he was thinking when he never once questioned his relationship with Porrim.

So yes, you were content. Not safe, not healed, not perfect, but content. And you could do was hope that it lasted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! 
> 
> Questions, comments, concerns? Hit me up at rogueofpans.tumblr.com


	6. Chapter Five: Sell Your Soul, Not Your Whole Self

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Full of spite and misery, too stubborn to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, wow, yeah this is still a thing. I've had the next few chapters written this whole time, but not edited. At this point it's been so long I'm just posting what I have, so sorry in advance for any and all errors. Hopefully I will get around to actually finishing this because I really do like it. Sorry for those of you who have been waiting.

Life is monotonous. The pain and cruelty are monotonous and you are so very tired. You would just off  yourself if you weren’t held together by pure spite for those who owned you. You would not give them the satisfaction of breaking. They would not care, instead you would be replaced like so many of your friends before until you just stopped having friends all together. 

You wish things were different, just as much as every other fucking troll on this planet did, but nobody had the guts to do anything about it. You had to be fair though, because you didn’t either. You accepted your fate just any other sad, pathetic excuse for a troll did and lived your life with the bitter contempt for the entire race, yourself included.

You have the power, you could use your psiioniics to break free and live the life the way you want it. In peace. But as much as the fantasy will get you through the hardest days, you know it’s just that, a fantasy. Even if you did manage to escape, peace doesn’t exist for someone like you, even with all your power, latent and sleeping within your bones. You would simply be on the run until you were captured again and then back to where you started, stuck again in the same fate you tried so hard to escape. What kind of life would you want outside of this anyways, it’s not like you know much else. You wouldn’t know what to do with this. No, as terrible as it is, scrubbing floors, performing tricks, fucking high blooded trolls that don’t give a shit about personality, it’s secure, it’s predictable for the most part and it’s the safest you’ll ever be.

You wipe blood from your nose as you lower a box onto the top of the stack in the corner. You had long before the sun had set and now it was close to midnight. Your master watches from the corner, the third one you’ve had in the past sweep. He is a high blue with horns that arch high and nearly touch as they curl in on themselves. The last master you had been disappointed with your performance, which was to say he didn’t like the fact that you ragdolled when ever he tried to fuck you. He had been one of your cruelest masters, a scar on your hip evidence of his desperate need to get some sort of response out of you. Thing was though, that you it. You knew what he wanted and you gave yourself some semblance of impossible pleasure by denying him his greatest need. Finally, he quite literally tossed you aside and you were forced to take shelter in a dark alley before the sun killed you. 

You were picked up by the Traders not long after and sold again within hours. And now your new master was cruel in a completely different fashion. He didn’t touch you, but he didn’t need to. He enjoyed watching you work, standing off as he forced you to use your psiioniics to complete meaningless chores. Even these boxes you’ve been moving all day have had no purpose. You have moved them around the room at least three times today and each time he tells you he is not satisfied and you need to do it again. You know he doesn’t need these boxes moved,  but he likes to watch the red and blue sparks and streams of light move countless objects and watch your body strain with the effort. By the time you are finally allowed to quit, you feel ready to pass out and yellow blood runs from your nose, leaks between lips and onto your tongue. You’ve come accustomed to the taste.

Your master is an ever looming presence in your life and all you can think is how you’ve had worse as a box drops unsteadily, the last one to finish off the pyramid. 

He doesn’t say a word, only nods and tells you once again to move them to the other side of the room, in another arrangement. 

“Careful this time,” he says, his voice a near growl as he pushes from the wall and disappears from the room. 

You breathe out heavily through your nose, wiping at the blood with the back of your hand. It’s a rare moment when you are left alone, but there is an unsettling unpredictability in when he will return so you don’t dare slacken on your task.

You focus all your mental energy on the crate you had just placed at the top of the pile and red and blue energy crackles around your eyes and the box, lifting it into the air.

Your vision blurs and the box tilts heavily to one side, ramming into the wall and splintering the corner.

You press your palms to your temples as if that would push the pain back into your head, containing it into a manageable box and allowing you to focus long enough to move the box more carefully before—

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”

The box drops several feet to the ground and crashes open in numerous jagged pieces, it’s contents splaying out across the floor in shattered pieces of glass. 

The hit comes before you recognize the rage in his eyes, though you don’t think you would have tried to avoid it even if you had the reflexes.

You crumble to the floor, catching yourself just enough to keep from breaking anything and the extra kick to your side sends the message deep into your muscles.

“You’re hardly good for anything aren’t you?” the blueblood mutters, nudging you roughly with a toe so you are forced to prop yourself up onto all fours.

You raise your head to look up at him fearing what my happen if you don’t and his face is set in firm disappointment, a look that is more terrifying than fear because you know what lies underneath.

“I need supplies from the market, put it on my bill, they know me,” he said, his voice holding the darkness of the void between the stars.

You nod and he watches you leave and you are certain he is still watching after you’re gone. He doesn’t have to warn about disobedience, you know the consequences, but it is not fear that makes you obey this time. It’s that spite coming back full force, that challenge that sparks you when ever he gives a command. He wants you to disobey, wants you to screw up, he’s giving you an out so he can play his real power card and have you culled once and for all. You’re sure he doesn’t need anything from the market, he’s just waiting for you not to return. That broken box should have been enough to have you out on the streets again, but he wants to give you false hope, a chance to run away under the false pretense of an errand run. You aren’t falling for it.

You are getting those supplies and you will return to the house with what he demands. In return, he will not be the one with the grim satisfaction of being right. 

“—kindness can be achieved if we find it within ourselves to accept that we are capable of it. We are a race that was twisted into this terrible fate of violence and betrayal. We were not born, we were created, molded by wild-haired demon to her own sick purposes.”

The voice is bold and sticks out above the general din of the market place crowd. The words catch your attention and you find yourself looking for the source. What insanity is this troll speaking, he could get culled for such speak, but something tells you that he is too dumb to realize it. Or perhaps he doesn’t care. Either way he’s an idiot and it would be foolish for you to get caught up in the audience he has gathered at his feet.

You push your way through the back, cursing the fact that it’s spilled its way into the road, clogging  up traffic. Really, this is a major inconvenience and you are in a hurry.

“We have the power to break the chains of animosity, to accept our brothers and sisters, regardless of age or blood. Each and every one of us, high or low, can break free and be our own good in the world. I have seen this world and it is beautiful.”

The words cut you before settling someplace that’s not necessarily uncomfortable. He talks for several more minutes before you realize you’ve actually stopped to listen. Realizing your mistake, you make a small sound of indignation and turn away, but not before catching his eyes. The understanding in them simply doesn’t make sense. 

When you reach the shop your master gets all of his supplies from, you can still hear the speaker’s voice, but now it is distant and hard to make out words. All the better to not get caught up in his folly and impossible fantasy. Kindness? Beauty? You practically spit on the very ideas and you think you would spit on him if given the chance, bite your tongue and mix it with blood for good measure. He was an idiot and you couldn’t give two shits about those who don’t care to preserve their own lives, they were only bringing their fate on themselves. Not to mention his talk of demons and visions. You had heard of the demon before, demoness to be more precise, an ageless burgundyblooded troll that showed up to wreak havoc on the troll race. You had never believed in it much, nothing more than a horror story to keep slaves and other lowbloods in line.

You carry out your transaction with out much memory of it and mindlessly your feet carry you home.

He’s still speaking. You swore to yourself that you wouldn’t notice or care. But here you are as he rambles on, telling some story of a vision he had as a child. You are still standing there when he finishes several hours later and are unpleasantly surprised when the crowd surrounding him disperses. You are slower to move, as if coming out of a daze. The words had kept you rooted and now you couldn’t remember a single one. Still, he catches your eyes again and while his mouth doesn’t move, his eyes smile, more accepting than what should be possible for a troll. It makes you sick and you turn away, hoping he doesn’t see the fear in your eyes. You learned to hide it sweeps ago, as a freshly pupated troll, but you know it’s there now. That gentleness was unnatural and you wanted nothing to do with it.

You are of course in trouble once you reach the house again, your master waiting outside before grabbing you by a horn and dragging you into the house. Nails dig into the bed where your horn connects to your head and the pain is a rare kind of excruciating. You bite your lip and draw blood for not the first time that day. You refuse to cry out, but as a result, tears run down your cheeks to meet the blood that drips to the floor.

The careless toss that throws you against the wall is nothing less than violent and you accept it. You recognize your faults, as any good slave should do. You accept punishment for your wrong doings, even if your head is ringing from its impact against the wall and so your master’s words are hard to make out. You don’t need to hear anyways, you know what he’s saying.

_ “Break free of the chains of animosity.” _

The memory almost startles you, coming unexpectedly to the forefront of your mind. You realize that it had never really left, instead pushed to the back of your mind where it lingered, patient and quiet, to reemerge when you lowered your defenses.

Even now, it’s not the same as when you first heard it. The voice is quieter, more personal. It’s not only urging, but encouraging.

_ “We were not born. We were created.” _

You wish it would just shut up. Claws dig into your shoulder, lifting you into a sort of slumped standing position. You roll your still dizzy head to look at your master. His eyes are sharp and unforgiving. You wonder if he’s infuriated by the fact that you came back far later than you should have, or by the fact that you returned at all. you know this is it. This is the end. He’s going to kill you now and you wonder if you care. 

“Break free and be our own good in the world.” 

Claws that go for your throat miss as you duck your head forward and instead you get an agonizingly sharp pain across your two right horns. That’s going to score.

If this does anything, it only serves to make him angrier, but your apathy has drained out with the blood from your lip and your eyes are dry of tears. You are done rolling over and taking it like the sad pathetic barkbeast you were raised to be.

_ “I have seen this world and it is beautiful.”  _

You do the one thing you have never done before. You fight back. For once you don’t think about the consequences, for once you let the emotions you’ve been crumpling up and tossing to the side consume you. Your body is hot, with power, with rage, with spite, with pain, with heart break and misery. There is no longer a place for apathy and obedience, there is no longer an acceptance for the life you now refuse to live. 

The fury in your master’s eyes turn to unabatead fear as quickly as yours does the opposite and there is a sense of freedom in knowing that you have the power, not just psionic, but a power of will, of ability. You know that you can fight, that you can win, you know that he is finally realizing what it means to be the one whose life is worth less than the dirt beneath his feet.

It only takes a small twitch from the corner of your eye, a spark of red and blue and your master’s head is hanging at an unsettling angle. 

He drops to the floor as if all the bones had left his body and with your blood humming, you step over it with out a second glance. 

You take a breath, grab the cloak from beside the door and escape into the night. 

 

~~~

 

He finds you, days later, in the neighboring town, hiding in an alley with week old bread and a piece of old dried meat that had been meant for the trash. You had been laying low, despite not hearing anything about your master’s death in the whispers on the street. The past few days have been filled with a turmoil of emotion as you struggled with the joy of freedom and the paralyzing fear of what exactly that implied. 

You had killed your master, there was no going back from that. You would be caught and culled for sure. But not if you kept running, if you kept moving, they couldn’t get to you. But perhaps if you just turned yourself in, you would be shown mercy, sent to work on some merchant ship overseas. You would bend over and play Her Condescensions foot stool if it just meant you were allowed to live. But you were powerful, everyone said you had the most psionic power they had ever seen, unequaled by any other of your bloodcaste. You could fight, they wouldn’t be able to touch you, no one would, not even the Empress. But you were tired of fighting, and your powers were what got you into this mess in the first place. 

Your mind was a wreck with regret that fought endlessly with the spite and apathy of your past life. You wanted to be happy. More than anything you wanted to relish in being your own person and having a life that was worth more than yesterday’s trash.

It was harder than it seemed when reminders of your actions and the consequences you had spent your whole life so keenly aware of and so accepting of haunted you while you tried to sleep.

You were tired, so very tired and as things settled without repurcussion, other than those you inflicted upon yourself in your own mind, you found yourself lost. You simply wanted to rest. To rest and to be happy. But to ask of such a thing of this world would be equal to asking to be a god.

And then there was him. He stood before you now, with that understanding smile that feared getting to big, as if you might break if it did. You think he might be right about that.

“I’ve seen you before,” he said gently, holding out a hand for you.

You don’t take it. You had known he was in town, aparently he had taken up the moniker “Signless” for obvious reasons and rumors about him were everywhere you had turned. You had avoided him as if he would be the one to cull you personally. He might has well have been, the way his words prompted you into your rage which led to your escape. You blamed him because you didn’t know what else to do. His voice still echoes occasionally but you think if you never have to hear it again, it will fade eventually.

He lowers his hand and his smile falters. There is a cold sensation in your chest and it takes you a moment to realize that you feel sad for denying him. He speaks again, but his voice holds no hint of the disappointment you were expecting.

“You had the strangest look on your face of any troll that listens to my sermons.” You get the feeling that he is simply filling the silence and you wonder if he’ll get to the point. He goes on and you remember how you never wanted to hear that voice again. The cold sadness fills you once more and spreads to in a tingling electricity to your fingertips.

“You seemed so… torn.” 

You give him a rather indignant look, an attempt to hide the slight shocked curiosity his words invoked.

“You were interested for a bit, but then you would look almost, angry, not at me, but at yourself.”

Okay, this guy needed to stop talking, this was getting weird. You shifted, making to stand and walk away.

If he noticed your movement, it didn’t bother him enough to stop him from talking. You silence did little to deter him either. 

“You’re lonely aren’t you?”

You stop, your back to him. He knew too much and you would be safer to kill him and escape once again to a new town where no one recognized you.

“A few days ago, there was talk of an escaped slave. Broke his master’s neck and fled. They haven’t been able to find him though, I hope he’s okay.”

Red and blue psionics crackled from the corner of your eyes and worked their way in twisting and popping streams down to your finger tips. 

“I am not here to hurt you, I come as a friend, as I do for all trolls, no matter their actions or their blood. You just want to be free. I can’t guarantee you safety, but I can grant you compassion, what ever protection I am able to provide. I can give you accceptance, understanding, an ear to listen and most importantly, a family. Come with me and you will be irreplaceable.”

The psionics die as tears line the lower lid of your eyes, spilling over only as you attempt to blink them away. 

“You’re lying,” you say, finally turning around to face him.

“And you can kill me if I am,” is all he replies and you cannot argue. Part of you wants to lash out at the unfairness of it all. This troll, this nobody without a sign, he is everything wrong with your life. You never had it good, and you never were going to. He had to come in with his words of hope and make you believe that there was something more, something within your reach that meant you could actually be something.

But he was right and that was the most infuriating thing of all. He was right about the fact that you could kill him and the desire was more than just a latent, passing thought. As angry as you were with him, for screwing you up, for making you feel everything you had staved off for your entire life, he opened up a path. He held a light that gave you direction. All you had to do was follow. 

It was better than what you had before, at least for the moment and you would be a fool not to accept. You hated him, but at least he gave you purpose and direction in a time when you had none.

“Fine,” you reply and the relief is almost painful. Whatever flickering power had been dancing around your mind as you debated died out like a fire consumed by water and you have to consciously stop yourself from physically collapsing.

His smile is brighter now and he once again offers you his hand. You can see no menace or falsity in his features, he is truly happy that you accepted. You heart aches at the thought of what he would have looked like if you had refused.

“I’m Kankri Vantas, though I’ve heard people like to refer to me as The Signless recently.”

This time you take his hand and he squeezes it in a comforting gesture.

“Mituna Captor,” you reply, curtly and uncertain. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Mituna, come, I’ll introduce you to the others.”

He doesn’t let go of your hand as he leads you from the alley way, pulling up his hood with one hand as you do the same. Your fingers are intertwined and even if he did try to pull away, you don’t think you would ever want to let go.

 

~~~

 

This is ridiculous. You are standing on the beach, definitely not pouting as you use your psionics to pound in one off the final nails on the deck of the ship. This is ridiculous and you are sure to let them all know it.

“This is ridiculous.”

Meulin’s characteristic laugh is unmistakable and her head of curly hair and green eyes peak up from below deck.

“So you’ve said mister grumpy-pants,” she said, climbing out of the hole in the most ridiculous way possible, avoiding using the stairs at all cost. Seriously, what is with this girl and climbing things. She really doesn’t know the meaning of convenience you are certain. 

“But this is just so stupid, none of us even know how to build a ship!” You cry, throwing your hands up into the air to emphasize your point. Your psionics run from the nail and along the wood, unitentially zapping Meulin who yelps with surprise.

“Really Mituna, control yourself,” Porrim chastises and you wrap your arms back around your legs, peaking out over your knees. “Sorry,” you mutter, the apology directed at both of the women.

She nods with that same tender smile she always gave you that reminded you so much of a lusus and it’s charge. You were probably not that much younger than her but that didn’t stop her from thinking of each of your party as her personal responsibility. Once you got over the annoying factor of it, you found it rather endearing. Not that you would ever admit it out loud.

Everyone was close. It was your own little family of outcasts where Porrim was the caretaker, Kankri and Meulin were the two starstruck lovers that had looked at the quadrants and kicked them into the dirt and then spit on them for good measure, and you. You were… well you didn’t quite know what your place was. Sometimes it felt more like like you belonged by default, that you were here simply because there was no place else for you to be.

You didn’t have the connection to any of them as they seemed to have to each other, you were the last one to join and therefore had been around the shortest. They did their best to make you feel included of course, but still there were nights that they laughed around the fire and you never felt more alone.

You think Kankri knows this. He has the uncanny ability to know how you’re feeling. But as wise as he is, you don’t think he knows how to make it better. You can’t blame him though, you don’t have the answer for that either, but you can at least appreciate being included. 

On the rare occasion where regret and self-pity overwhelms you to the point where you’ll seclude yourself off into the shadows and hope no one notices, he’ll come and silently sit by your side. Together you’ll watch the stars, silent but feeling like there’s a whole conversation filling the gap between you. Somehow it always ends with your head on his shoulder before he presses a kiss into your hair and leads you back to where Meulin and Porrim are chattering away about one thing or another.

The whole thing is strikingly similar to moirailegence but… not. It’s so one sided that if you dared call it pale you might explode yourself with your own psionics at the implication that you would use him like that. Kankri is a friend and there’s no way you could make up to him everything that he’s given you in a way that even remotely resembles moirailegence. 

Of course, this only adds to the distress of feeling like you’re on the outside looking in. You feel like there’s so much more that you should do, that you could do, but whether it was life or your own inadequecy that leaves you limited, you can never reach that goal of paying Kankri back with everything  he deserves.

Part of you feels like you should tell him all this, and you’ve contemplated it. But you don’t think you could find the words even if you found the will. So instead you so what little you can, keeping a close eye on all of them, zapping at anybody that gets too close during sermons, acting as a guard at all hours, helping with whatever is needed, and yes, that includes building this damn boat. 

“I think it looks just fine regardless,” Meulin pipes up, bringing you out of your thoughts as she sits down beside you. Her energy is off putting at the worst of times, but comforting at the best. When you’re exceptionally low and Kankri had pulled you back into the tiny fold of your group, her energy serves to bring you back up a little more in a way that you don’t think Kankri or Porrim could ever manage. 

Meulin has such positive outlook on life in general that it makes you sick, but just as any sickness, it’s contagious and you start finding hope in your own thoughts where there was nothing but apathy and despair not a sweep ago.

Thoughts like that are what got you to help with this stupid ship and what has you believing that it might actually stay together long enough to make it across the sea. 

Jumping off the side and into the sand, you take a few steps back and realize that she’s right, it doesn’t look bad. 

“Just because it looks good, doesn’t mean it’ll float,” you counter, crossing your arms.

A heavy weight falls across your shoulders.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Kankri says, looking proudly upon the vessel.

“Wait!” Meulin cries, runninng up to the bow with a can of something you can’t catch the name of. She pries it open with her teeth—wow, dignified— and then dips her fingers in to spread green paint on the wood.

First Ship.

“Okay, first, that’s a stupid name,” you say with a small scoff. “Second, that’s just going to wash off in the water.”

She turns around and sticks her tongue out at you and wow, she’s dignified and mature, you can see why Kankri fell for her. You only give her the response of a strong eye roll. 

“No dummy! It’s waterproof, I got it from the ship supply store by the docks! Also it’s the perfect name!”

You snort. “It is far from the First Ship Meulin, hundreds if not thousands have come before it.”

“But it’s our First Ship,” she argues, her voice almost a whine and as you roll your eyes again for the second time in just as many seconds and she, in response, once again sticks out her tongue.

You don’t believe that the paint will actually work as well as she thinks but you have learned to just leave such things be. If you argued with Meulin on every little point, you would have lost your voice long ago.

“Are we ready then?” 

You aren’t sure when Porrim came to stand beside you or where she had wandered off to in the first place but her presence puts Meulin’s tongue right back where it came from and you relax a little, giving a nod. 

Kankri’s arm falls from your shoulder and you watch as he grabs railing of the deck  and hoists himself up and over. He’s as bad as his crazy lady-love. You and Porrim walk the plank up like normal, civilized trolls and soon you are all crowded on the small deck. 

You take a deep breath but have trouble releasing it again. A firm hand finds yours and you look over to find Kankri giving you an encouraging smile. You let out the breath slowly as you relax and raise a hand, letting your psionics spark around your eyes and envelop the boat, careful not to touch your friends with anything more than a tickle on the edges. 

Something this massive would be pushing it for a lesser psionic, as small as the ship is, especially when you’re trying to deflect the flow around your friends at the same time. But for you it takes nothing more than half a breath and the ship is pushed out to sea. 

The other half of that breath however, catches in your throat as you wait for something to go wrong. Kankri’s fingers squeeze around yours and you don’t know if he’s anticipating the same thing or trying to comfort you.

The ship bobs but works just as well as any other out at sea and after a quick scan with your sparks of red and blue, you find no leaks or discrepancies and pull them back to you where they vanish with one final spark.

You slump against Kankri who releases your hand to clap you comfortingly on your shoulder. 

“We’re just fine, my friend. We’ll be just fine.”

You nod and allow yourself a small smile. For a moment you believe him and in all your life, it’s the warmest you’ve ever felt.

 

~~~

 

By some miracle, none of you get seasick. You don’t know if any of you had ever been on a ship before, other than yourself. You had been a deckhand to a violet blood sweeps ago when you were very young, but even then you had managed to mannipulate your psionics to work internally and some how balance out your equillibrium and keep your stomach calm, just as you were doing now. After a few hours it became natural and mindless, but you weren’t sure how the others managed. The best guess was for Meulin and that was that she was so used to bouncing and bounding every where, that the constant rocking and jolting of your small ship wasn’t much different and did little to phase her. As for the other two, you had the idea. Kankri was probably just so determined not to be that he managed to override his own biological functions. You wouldn’t hold it past him, it it just the type of thing his stuborness and weird mutation would pull. Porrim on the other hand, if she was feeling anything, was too dignified to let it show, especially when everyone else was clearly fine. You found yourself eyeing her occasionally over the next day and night cycle, as if she were actually hiding something.

Maybe you were just far too bored. 

The sea was boring. There was nothing for miles but the same pink-tinted horizon, just barely differentiating the sea from the sky. The weather was good and you sailed along at a nice clip, hiding below deck as soon as the sun began to rise. But that’s all it was. Pointed waves that would grow and fade, in and out, away and back again. You could see no shore in any direction and this far out, the waves are far too small to even grow white at the tips, lazy and sick. A pink moon and spots that opening the void like some god had taken a tooth pick to the sky to give you some breathing space.

You lean over the railing with a sigh, resting your chin on a hand and you don’t bother looking over as Kankri joins you.

“Beautiful night,” he says and you snort.

“Just as beautiful it was the night before and the night before that, except then there was actually land and something changing.”

Kankri laughed and you find yourself wondering, not for the first time, how he can do that so easily and not have it sound forced. “We’ll get there eventually, Mituna, it should only take a couple of weeks.”

“Frankly that’s three too long,” you say bitterly and he pats you on the back, a friendly gesture that you still are learning not to flinch from.

He opens his mouth to say something more, but Meulin’s voice interrupts the silence.

“Alright my friends! It is time to liven up this party!”

You turn around, you and Kankri sharing the same quizzical look.

Raised above her head, Meulin holds three glass bottles of a nameless alcohol. 

You blink slowly. Once. Twice. Three times. You open your mouth to speak but Kankri beats you to it.

“Where did you get that!”

You glance at Porrim and she’s holding that frown of disapproval that always has you feeling like a wiggler again and you know that she is thinking the same as you and Kankri.

“A huntress has her ways,” she says, swaying her butt in a fashion similar to a swooshing cat’s tail. She sets two of the bottles down and uses her bare hands to pull the cork from the third, drinking a good three-fourths of the bottle in a few large gulps.

God she terrified you.

“Oh dear,” you hear Porrim say softly and yeah, that can’t be healthy.

“I have at least three more bottles below deck!” Meulin says excitedly.

You shake your head. “You’re crazy.”

“You still haven’t answered the question,” Kankri adds.

Meulin continues to choose to ignore both of you as she takes another swallow from the bottle before handing one each of you, the nearly empty one going to Porrim before she disappears below deck and comes back up with the other bottles mentioned earlier.

“No way,” you say, trying to hand the bottle back. Kankri looks at his as if Meulin just handed him a grub and said it was his and Porrim sets hers aside as politely as she can.

“Come on grouchy-pants. It’ll be fun! We’re safe and it’s about time we celebrated!” Meulin cried, throwing her arms into the air and spinning around on her toes. If you didn’t know her so well already, you would have assumed that she had already downed two bottles that you hadn’t seen before coming up to deck. God, if this was what she was like sober, you feared getting more of the soporific into her system. The idea was almost enough to get you drinking, just to ensure she didn’t get any more. It would be for a good cause.

You wrinkle your nose and let the bottle fall  to your side, half tempted to throw it over board, but even if you weren’t going to drink it, that would be a waste. “What on Alternia could we be celebrating,” you say. You bring the bottle back up to your face to try and examine it better but the labels have either been torn or warn off and honestly that just makes you worry even more. “There is no such thing as safe with  us.”

You don’t miss the look Kankri but of course Meulin draws his attention again before he can follow through on it. “We made it out to sea! The boat works and now more trolls will be able to hear the message of The Signless. That’s a wonderful thing, don’t you think? Besides, we’re not being hunted out here, nobody’s here for miles, and when we reach shore again, it’ll be like a brand new start.”

“You don’t know that,” you say and she pouts. “Seas are just as dangerous. There are pirates and gamblignants. What’s worse, if caught we wouldn’t have anyplace to run.”

Her pouting is more indignant than sad, as if you had offended her and her positivity. You probably did. You had a knack for that. But you had to be realistic, it’s how you survived. 

“Party-pooper,” she huffed and Kankri sighs.

“Mituna, don’t you think we deserve at least one night to relax?”

_ I don’t deserve anything, not like you do _ , you think, but you tuck that thought back with the rest of them to dwell on at a more private time and let out a begrudging sigh. 

“I’m sure a drink or two might not hurt.”

He smiles and you find yourself doing the same.

 

~~~

 

Turns out that your a lightweight. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering a lifetime of malnourishment, what little provisions you have on the ship between the four of you, as well as an involuntary abstinence to alcohol up until this point. 

You barely get half way through the first bottle before you start feeling the effects, a whoosiness that’s only made worse by the rocking of the ship, a giggle that erupts from your lips when you least expect it, accented by a crackle of psionics. You’re sitting with Kankri on the floor of the deck and leaning against mast as you try to teach him a shanty that you can’t actually remember. 

“As the waves they took me— no no no, dockside my flushed sweet heart—fuck.”

Kankri laughed in a loud burst and you joined in as he took another drink and joined you in the singing, half a line behind you constantly changed the lines and he struggled to catch up.

“Fuck the song, let’s dance,” he says, shoving you playfully in the shoulder.

“But I don’t know how to dance,” you say, pouting slightly. You swayed with his push but bobbed right back up again.

“Who cares. No one cares. We’re alone and it’s beautiful.”

You don’t think anything could be truer as you let him clumsily haul you to your feet and pull you into his arms. “Just follow me,” he says, his words slurring. You don’t know how much of a good that idea is, but having him follow you would be a million times worse so you nod. 

You stumble over each other, belting out a song that you actually know, one about praising the empress, but you’re constantly changing the lyrics ever so slightly to something that would likely get you culled if you were anywhere else. 

Muelin is quick to join in and Porrim watches from the sidelines with an amused smile. Together you scream your song to the heavans and dance in circles, hand in hand around the deck of the ship.

Soon your song dissolves into hysterical laughter and so does your dance as you all fall into a pile on top of each other, bubbling with giggles and thrumming with heavy breaths. 

You’ve finished all the alcohol that Meulin has brought on board and even Porrim has finished off her fourth a bottle that Meulin had given her at the start, one that she had been nursing more as a need to be polite than actually wanting to drink.

Some how you’ve all ended up in a sort of pile. Kankri is leaning back against Porrim’s legs as she rubs circles into his shoulder. You’re leaned up against him, tucked under his arm and your head resting against his shoulder. Meulin is laying on her back on Kankri’s other side, her head in his lap, staring up at the stars as he mindlessly plays with her curls.

It’s quiet, even the constant splash of the sea is so commonplace now that you hardly hear it. None of you talk, and you don’t think there’s any thing that needs to be said really. Nobody sleeps and if they’re anything like you, they don’t want the night to end. But the sun is bound to rise soon and you will be forced below deck for shelter. You try not to think about it too much and allow yourself to dwell in the moment. You fear that if any of you move it will all come to a stark end and any peace that is there amongst you will be lost and you’re not sure if you would be able to find it again.

For now though, the fear is nothing more than a gentle nudge, rocking at the back of your mind where you know you’ll have to confront it eventually but not right now. Not right now. You shift a little closer to Kankri and in return, he pulls his arm a little tighter around your shoulders. 

You feel like crying, but you don’t think they are sad tears so you let them fall. Kankri seems to notice this as he gives you a silent nudge to ask if you’re okay. 

You look up to meet his worried gaze and give a small nod, and for the first time in your life, give a small, genuine smile.

You don’t think you’ve ever been happy before, you never thought it was possible. Not happy in a real way at least. But as Kankri smiles back, a spread of lips that is filled with not only happiness, but pride and peace, you think that this is real. It is warm and for once, nothing in you aches. You angle your head a little more and Porrim is giving you the same look. Meulin raises an arm and with that smile that hold an energy and fascination enough for all of you, points at the stars.

“Look, we’ve sailed far enough to see  Skaius.”

You don’t know much about the stars, but you’ve heard of the constellation, a god-like construct that was supposed to be the source of your creation as well as that of your universe. You can’t spot it amongst the pinpoints of stars across the black sky,  but you know that you can only see it from the southern hemisphere. You allow yourself to trace pictures in the sky, wondering if they mean anything. Meulin could probably make up stories about them.

So you tell her what you see, a man with a bow, a woman with a long draping dress, a god with his hands raised high and in return she tells her stories, myths and gods that never existed except in this small world you’ve created with each other. 

Here, you are the gods and while your bodies my die, your words and messages will live on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, concerns? Hit me up at rogueofpans.tumblr.com


	7. Chapter Six: If We Met At Midnight At The Hanging Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death is rarely about the ones who die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, sorry for the errors.

_ And The Walls Come Tumbling Down….(The Handmaid) _

 

It’s time.

You have known this you’re entire life and at the same time you are just now figuring this out.

The crowd that gathers around the Signless is quite large now, much bigger than it was when he first started and even bigger than a sweep or two ago before he sailed across the sea to spread his word further across Alternia.

You rather liked Kankri Vantas, or the Signless as he is known to his faithful followers. He was his own little pocket of chaos on Alternia, slowly building power until he was finally ready to explode. You had kept the sectarian revolt that had been building for the last sweep off of them for as long as was needed, usually providing misleading information to send potential captors in another direction.

The Signless and his little party couldn’t be caught to early after all, otherwise their impact would be nothing more than a drop of water falling onto dry ground. It would be good for the moment, influential even, but soon time would cause it to disappate and whatever life it created would wither away with it and no one would remember.

But now it was time to  bring it all to head. The Signless’ following was big enough not to die out easily, or, as you and your master knew, at all. But in order for the moment to hold, there needed to be a big finish, a climax to make it all come to point, to prove that it was all worth it. Or maybe it wasn’t, that wasn’t for you to decide.

The Signless and his little party of followers were aware of the revolt of course, but only in their peripheral. It had yet to hit them and they had yet to realize the full brunt and carnage of it, but now it was time for you to step back and let them face the result of their influence.

The screams stop Signless mid-speech, and you watch as he looks down the street and can pinpoint the exact moment he realizes what’s happening. The revolt has arrived and the highbloods are winning.

From here, things should handle themselves and as much as you would love to stick around and watch things unfold, you are getting bored and you have other places to be.

Brushing your hands of the situation, you vanish.

  
  


~~~

 

_ Hold On To What We Are… (The Signless) _

You are and have always been a fool.

You aren’t sure why you dared hope, you’ve seen the world and despite your dreams for the possibilities, you knew it wasn’t possible to happen in your lifetime, however long that may be.

Still, you had to keep your spirits high. How were  you to get people to believe you if you doubted yourself? It would do no good and so that knowledge of the inevitable was pushed to the back of your mind to slowly fester but only be dealt with at what you deemed to be the appropriate time.

The scream catches your attention and you turn to watch the line of Alternian solidiers and highbloods approach your audience and that inevitablity leaves your mind in order to fly back at you and stab you hard in the chest. But it is just that, inevitable and so you don’t run, you accept the fate you had known all along would come and prove once and for all that you only mean peace, that you would not propagate violence.

The crowd parts with nary a word on the part of the soldiers. You step down from your small makeshift precipice, stepping up to the front line where they had stopped only a few feet away. You are vaguely aware of your friends’ tension. Meulin and Porrim are trying to say something to you, Mituna’s psionics crackle around your feet. You raise your hand, glancing over your shoulder to give them a nod. It would be okay, you wanted to say, but hope they understood all the same. You like to believe they did, because all three of them fall still and silent, even the psionics die to nothing more than a flicker in the corner of your eye.

“Are you the one they call the Signless?” A violet blood says, stepping forward, if the bars and ribbons are anything to go by, he was the leader.

A murmur passed through the crowd because of course he was, that was a stupid question, but it was clear that they weren’t sure what to do with someone they expected to flee. And while you spoke against Her Imperious Condecension and called into doubt the way she reigned by the very nature of your sermons, you had never done so directly. The whole situation was this grey area they weren’t sure how to handle.

You bring a claw to the inside of your arm and slice open your arm, dripping bright red candy blood to the ground in large drops.

They tense, waiting for something more to happen. It only made sense that they would be so on edge, they weren’t stupid enough to rush in when all of this could easily be a trap.

You hold up your arm and address the crowd as a whole. “My words and my blood are my weapons. Here I lay them down at your feet and pray for peace and mercy at your hands.” You kneel down before them and raise your wrists to the violetblood leader.

There is no more hesitation as they slap metal cuffs onto your wrists and yank you to your feet.

There is a cry and Meulin is in front of you, a tear in her shoulder that leaks olive colored blood. “You can’t!” she says, now that she finally has your eyes.

You give her a kind smile and you can see her break, your own soul going along with her. “I’ll be fine my love. It is not me they fear. You must forgive them,” you say, reaching up and stroking a cheek. Your hand comes back damp and a bit chilled. You grab her hands and pull her in for a caste but desperate kiss before you are forced apart again. Porrim and Mituna pull her away before the highbloods can think to take her and you are pulled away by a pair of cavalreapers.

It is wise of your friends to run. Mituna says nothing as they take off in the opposite direction, but you barely catch the two words spoken by Porrim before they are out of range.

“Be Safe.”

You fear it is the one promise you will have to break.

~~~

You are locked in a windowless cell and you aren’t sure how much time passes in there. You sleep most of it off, for the sake of nothing else to do. You aren’t sure what you’re waiting for, the legislacerators most likely. You assume that it will be a quick trial, if you are so graced with one.

There are no visions when you sleep this time and that saddens you a little.

When you are finally pulled from the cell again, it with harsh tugging that causes you to scrape your knees as you struggle to stay on your feet.

They laugh, quickly making it a game of who could get you off your feet first and by the time you reach your destination,you are exhausted, hungry from had to have been days without food, and scraped up from head to toe. For having spent your whole life trying to hide your blood, you are surprisingly calm. The fact that you are a mutant is on display for everybody to see doesn’t seem to bother you at all.

You are dragged to the top of a large and swelling hill where you recognize the pillar that is stationed at t he crest. A large looming structure with a lip at the top from which chains hang. It is used for the rather uncommon public executions, for the trolls that not only need to be gotten rid of, but also made an example of.

With a sharp sinking in your chest, you realize that there would be no trial.

A crowd has already gathered at the base of the hill, a mix of every caste and you know this is your last chance to get through to as many as you can.

You struggle against your metal bindings as the high bloods hold you back.

“My friends! This is exactly the sort of thing we can stop, shake hands without your claws bared and you will see the good that you can bring into the world!” You’re words are cut off with a sharp grunt as you are punched hard across the face, your chains tugging you into you into the fist.

You spit bright red blood to the ground and continue.

“One small deed can make a world of difference. Please, I am begging, not to save me, but save yourselves. My time here is done, but you all carry on.”

A knee to your gut and you’re falling to your knees, coughing up a mouthful of blood.

You look up as a small cry erupts from your lips, a blade slicing into your side and your cloak is ripped from your body.

A fire ignites, numbing the pain as your eyes land on a troll approaching you with a sway to her hips, tall and slender, decorated in gold and bearing horns that arched to the sky.

“Whale, whale, whale.” There was a smack to her words that had you longing to nip at her heels. You promised yourself you couldn’t hate anybody. You swore it as a child. Each troll was unique and capabale of good. You had to believe that, or everything that you lived, everything that you were now dying for was for naught. You would not let your life be useless, you would not let it go without meaning.

But Her Imperious Condescension made it nearly impossible. You had seen nothing but selfish malice from her, and you couldn’t help but be reminded how she was the cause of everything you were fighting against, if not at least promoting and propagating it.

“I sea we finally cod  you at last. You’re a slippery little eel, you know? Annoying as fuck.”

She gives you an annoyed sneer and you growl up at her, painfully aware of the 2x3dent stabbed at a harsh angle next to her as she holds it around he middle with a manicured hand, the other on her hip.

The fish puns slice you as well as a blade. There is a lack of professionalism that plays war with her air of authority that exudes itself in waves from her body and drowns anyone that tries to swim against the current.

“You can kill the body, but you can’t kill the idea,” you spit at her.

The prideful smirk she gives you is arrogant and pleased. She bends down onto one knee and grabs your chin with two cold fingers.

“Bouy, I wiped out an entire caste of trolls because of how they threatened me. Your little cult here isn’t as big as you think, I’ll hunt down each and every one of them and cull them myself if I have to. Just watch me.”

You tear your head away and she stands again. “My people—”

Her laugh cuts you off, its high and piercing and while it’s not quite enough to make your ears bleed, you sort of wish it would, just in hopes to muffle the sound.

“ _ Your people?!”  _ she guffawed with, amused disbelief. “They were never  _ yours _ . I’m the Empress here! You are nothing but a signless mutant troll putting crayzy ideas into  _ my  _ people’s thinkpans. Something you have  _ no _ business doing mind you. And now I will make an example of you and all of these trolls will see what happens when they follow your word. Perhaps we’ll find out that you don’t have as many followers as you thought.”

You’re going to be sick. She turns away and you swear she  _ saunters _ back to a small area clearly designated for her viewing pleasure. 

You are yanked back to your feet and a wideset ceruleanblood comes to stand before you. One of her horns curl, the other straight, setting her to look off balance in an almost ironic way, given the uniform and emblem on her lapels that gives her away as a legislacerater.

“Kankri Vantas, otherwise known as The Signless, you are here by sentenced to public execution for speaking against the Empress and promoting others to your cause. May you die in the way you lived, and may your punishment equal that of your transgressions.”

She nods over to a troll you can’t crane your head around enough to see and instead you spot three trolls in the crowd you were hoping not to see.

They should not be here! You find anger returning at their foolishness. You would not wish your death to be displayed to anyone, much less them. Not to mention that they are well known as some of your most loyal followers and it is likely that if they are noticed, their fate will be equal to yours. You could not handle the thought. Everything you’ve done, everything you’ve lived for, everything you are being punished for now, it is you and you alone. You will not stand others to suffer in the same way.

It is your hope that your death will be enough to allow your followers to live in relative peace.

It is foolish, you are aware, the Condesce is thorough if nothing else, but hope is all you have when there is nothing left to fight with.

A tealblooded troll approaches you with two cuff attached to each other by flat pieces of arching metal. The whole thing glows with bright orange heat and panic runs like a swarm of stinging insects through your body. You fight but you simply do not have the strength that the highbloods, especially not several of them at once, and so your struggles turn to screams as the cuffs are molded locked around your wrists and melded shut. Your voice is cracked and hoarse by the time they string you up and you hang from the scolding cuffs.

You know they’re crying and you wish they wouldn’t see. You can see sparks of red and blue from the corner of your vision and you force yourself not to look. You wish there was some way to comfort them, but instead you focus on breathing as a sharp crack against  your back has it flying from your lungs.

You’ve never been angry like you have been these last few minutes. It comes in waves and you find your peaceful demeanor harder and harder to maintain. They are testing you, or perhaps you are testing yourself. The pain flowing down from your wrists is dizzying and it’s hard to think of what you’re supposed to be doing.

You suck in a breath and another snap of pain shoots through your body like a thousand arrows piercing every piece of you. Another whips and the pain shocks your chest and spreads like ice through your body. You are vaguely aware of your blood, but blood is the point, is it not?

Each new flash of pain adds another wave of anger and finally you let out a scream that silences the crowd.

“ _ FUCK THIS! _ ”

You pant heavily and everyone stares, frozen. You cannot blame them, no one had expected you to speak, much less yourself. You force yourself to raise your head, the skin around your wrists so scalded now that there’s almost nothing left to burn.

“Fuck everything about this!” you yell and a murmur builds up in the crowd. You refuse to be silenced, not this time, not until you say your peace.

“Fuck that I care so much! Fuck that after all of this that I still care! I still forgive you. I forgive everyone of you. My people, you must do the same, forgive those who harm you. If they take a horn, give them the other. Violence only begets violence and it will not stand! This is no way to live my followers. Remember the world I have taught you. My body may die, but my spirit will live on in each of you. Fuck every piece of the sadistic society we were molded to be. It is not me they want, but my word and my blood. Those are my weapons and those are yours as well. Fight back with kindness and fuck everything that says we cannot be generous and compassionate. I have seen it in each and every one of you, I have seen it in a world we have yet to create, but we are the gods of our own future. You can hang me up and torture me for all to see, but no matter how many of us die, we will live on.”

You slump again and finally look over to meet the eyes of your friend. You speak one last time, quietly and while you doubt they hear your words, you like to believe they understand. “How can I still care so much after all they have done to me? Why am I so angry, but not out of hate, but out of love and pity?” You laugh, weak and pathetic, a sound that is more a sharp cough of splattered blood than an actual sound of humor. “I’m ready,” you say and as if waiting for this command, an arrow pierces your side.

~~~

_ Why We Kill The Things We Love The Most…(The Dolorosa) _

You are constantly aware that your time on this planet is limited. You have lived a long and full life, albeit a bit unconventional. Well, perhaps more than a bit, but the point remained that you were pleased with how things had turned out.

Kankri had grown into everything you had hoped and dreamed he would be and it made the guilt of abandoning your duty and your people just a little bit easier to live with. You couldn’t have been more proud of him and loved him deeper than any unquadranted troll should.

You only had a handful or two of sweeps left, not enough to start worrying, but enough to start a growing awareness of your own mortality in those late mornings when there is nothing else to distract your mind.

You had always known there would come a time when your life would end, but you never dared imagine that you would outlive him.

Of all the times that you feared that someone would discover his blood as a child, that he would say something that would give you away, that something or someone would get you before his second pupation and he would be left  _ alone _ , nothing terrified you more than when you were approched by the Alternian military and Kankri sliced himself open for them all to see.

You found yourself breathless and without a voice. Meulin was screaming, but her words made no sense to your ears. You were vaguely aware that you were helping Mituna to hold her back, but your brain wasn’t quite connecting as to why. There was a short circuit somewhere that wasn’t letting you compute that this was even happening.

Your mind screamed at you to stop this, to fight back, to help him, but then he smiles at you and you silence those voices. This is how it meant to be. You never talked about it, but he always new this day would come, and maybe you always knew too. Perhaps he was just more accepting of the loss that it entailed. He had years to prepare after all, you’re the one that had raise him that way, to always be prepared for the worse, to be aware of he dangers of your mission. It seems now that he was far more prepared than you and you wish he had been able to return the lesson as  he speaks and you fear it is the last you will hear his voice.

Meulin rips from your hands and your claws tear a jagged wound into her shoulder, you are left with two claws dripping olive green blood and your own tears tinted jade as you watch her rush to her beloved, screaming in a way that only the mourning could. It was a sound that you had only heard once before, right before you first met, the sound that had attracted you to her in the first place.

You can hardly hear what ever Kankri happens to say to her, but you can see the way she seems to break, her expression falling and her body going limp, barely holding herself up. Then they kiss and you have to look away, not because you find it indecent, you had seen them kiss many times before, but because you don’t think you can handle such raw passion when you feel like your own body is going to shatter into welcomed pieces. One break and maybe you wouldn’t have to feel pain like this ever again.

“We have to go,” You say, firm and sharp, the leader you never were as you turn away from your charge and take Mituna’s hand.

He yanks it away. “We have to help them, we can’t just—” You turn on him, your pain turning into fury because you will  _ not _ be dealing with this right now. “We cannot fight, we cannot win, the best we can do is survive and find a way to help him later. We will push the odds into our favor Mituna, trust me on that, But not right now.”

Your words come out in a hiss and seem to knock some sort of sense into him as he simply nods and glances back at Meulin who has slowly backed towards you as eyes start to turn on you, now that The Signless is captured.

You take off in the opposite direction and by some miracle, the crowd lets you trough, what’s left of it at least. A few of the high bloods follow but you loose them within several minutes with the help of some distractions caused by Mituna’s psionics.

You find a place outside of town to hide and while Meulin sobs hard and heavy, your own tears stream like steady rivers down your face and soak your dress. Mituna doesn’t cry, instead he looks empty and resigned. You wish you had the words to comfort him, to comfort him both, but this isn’t one of Kankri’s scraped knees and there aren’t words that can staunch the wound on this kind of pain and loss.

Finally you sniff one last time and wipe away the last of your tears. “This is getting us no where,” you say.

Meuling looks at you, eyes swollen and nose tinted green and dripping snot. Mituna barely glances up but you can see the change in his expression from an almost dark accepetance of the situation to a mild shock and curiosity.

“He’s not dead yet and when I said we would find a way to help him, I meant it, we just need to find out where they’re keeping him.”

“Probably one of he prison blocks on the south end of town,” Mituna answers with far too much confidence.

You can’t question that right now and instead give a nod.

“Is there any way to know for sure?”

“With our mugs being front page news for the next several sweeps? no way, not unless we break in and look for ourselves.”

You frown, you do not like the sound of that. Meulin sniffles again and you find yourself pulling her close and running a hand through her curls as you try and think.

“He has to have a trial, right?” Meulin asks, forever hopeful.

Both you and Mituna purse your lips and there is doubt heavy between you. You would like to believe something like that was possible, but it seems that society, much less the Empress would be so generous for someone as big as The Signless.

“I say we break in and get him out.” Mituna says bitterly.

“And if he’s not there then we’re all dead,” you snap back and let out a sigh. Once again you are forced to be a voice of reason and what you say next is something you wished would never have passed your lips.

“If Kankri… If this doesn’t turn out well, we have to make sure we live so his message can carry on. That’s what’s important here, that’s what he would want.”

The two younger trolls both look at you like you had just murdered Kankri yourself.

“No fucking way,” Mituna spat and Meulin seemed to agree with this sentiment. “You’re not allowed to talk as if he’s already dead! I don’t give a shit about his message or his people, I care about  _ him _ . Everybody else can die for all I care, he’s the only one that ever mattered.”

“But if you cared about him then  you would care about his message!” you shoot back but he’s not listening any more.

“Porrim’s right, you’re dismissing a large part of who he was by saying that,” Meulin added, finally getting to her feet, she was still the shortest of he group, without the horns and she barely came to Mituna’s shoulders. “This is what he worked so hard for and to throw that away, to not care it’s just… you might as well not care about him at all!”

Mituna spun on her, his psionics crackingly dangerously about his face. “You too?!” he cries, acid dripping from each word. “You’re meaning to accept his death for the sake of a few words?!”

“No!” Meulin stomps her foot in frustration and you can see that the tears are returning. “I’m just saying that if we can’t save him, we have to make sure he didn’t live for nothing! I care about him just as much as both of you and the way you’re talking… I’m beginning to wonder if you ever believed him! Maybe you were just too caught up in being special, you missed what was most special about him. You’re just a selfish, broody ass hole that doesn’t give a shit about anything that he lived for, anything that he based his whole life around! The very same thing that rescued  _ you!” _

Mituna sneers and before you can say anything to stomp him, stomps off.

“Mituna!” you cry after him, taking a few steps before he turns around, psionics flaring, singing your arms and leaving faint scars as you raise them to protect your face.

“No, fuck you! If you won’t save him I will!” Another flash and he disappears into the sky.

You collapse to your knees. Everything is breaking apart around you and you don’t have the strength to pull it back together, even if you could, there would be more blood than glue to hold it all together and in the end, you don’t think it would be worth it.

A gentle hand touches your shoulder and you realize you’re crying again.

“I’m so sorry Meulin,” you say, turning to her and she shakes her head, pulling you into a tight embrace that only makes you feel more shattered than put together.

You stay like that for a long time, until she finally stands, whispering something about finding some food. You wonder at what point she became the strongest among the group.

You sit in silence. Up until this point, everything had sort of worked out, if you were in danger, you ran or you fought and then you moved on. But now, neither was an option and you were lost. Not knowing what to do was almost more painful than Kakri getting taken away in the first place. You just felt so useless, so  _ wrong _ .

Perhaps this is how Mituna had felt his entire life.

The thought just makes everything inside you clench with a burning sickness and you put a hand to your mouth before slamming hands to the ground and  _ screaming. _

Meulin is there before you even realize she had returned. A dead lusus at her feet as she takes in the scene and realizes there is no danger after all. She relaxes ever so slightly and begins to carve up the beast. You watch with a blank fascination, and your brain continues to try to work out some sort of plan. It remains as lost as ever, even after you have eaten and drifted off to sleep.

~~~

It is several days before you hear anything, there is no sign of Mituna but the news of the execution taking place on the hill becomes public knowledge and it’s impossible not to know, especially when you are listening for any hints on how to help either of your friends.

However, you only hear of it the day of and are late joining the crowd while still trying to remain inconspicuous. Nobody seems to notice you, to focused on the troll they’re dragging to the crest of the hill.

You and Meulin push your way to the front and it isn’t long before Mituna is with you. You all look at each other, there are no words, but a silence of understanding forgiveness. You take note of the fresh wounds of bruises and dried blood and you can tell the Meulin does too. Two greenblood hand find Mituna’s and he grasps them without protest. There is a solidarity and more than anything else, it makes you feel a little bit better. You had all failed and there was nothing left to be done. You all understood that and once again, Kankri was bringing you together.

You scream as they beat him and your voice is loud to your own ears, not silent and muffled like when he was taken. You’re glad, you want to hear it, to know it’s real. When he begins to speak, it brings on an almost peaceful heartbreak. Who knew it was possible for someone to feel like a glass dropped from a cliff and a peaceful childhood melody all at once. Still, it was a welcome contrast to the numb frustration you’ve been feeling the past few days.

There is a thrumming between your hand and Mituna’s and you don’t know if it’s the psionics crackling around your feet or the collected desire of all three of you to run up that hill and stop all of this. Somehow you manage to hold each other and you know it’s more out of strength of will and understanding than actual physical strength.

You won’t admit that this is harder for you than the other two, because it’s not, but you are certain your pain is different. Your pain is that of losing purpose, of watching your charge suffer a fate that he never deserved. Your pain is one of your own suffering and while Meulin and Mituna have their own pain, they were inducted in. You  _ created _ this. You were the one that started this all, that saved him, that taught him and encouraged him. This was the very fate you were desperate to protect him from from the very beginning. This suffering and sorrow you felt was of your own design. It was yours and yours alone.

There is a fresh flash of psionics as the Condesce herself approaches Kankri. You find yourself actually physically holding back Mituna this time, resisting your own urge to stomp up there and claw her damn eyes out.

You can’t hear what they’re saying and you’re sure you don’t want to, it would only anger you more. It’s bad enough when she laughs and you can feel your bones grating.

You don’t relax until she walks away and Kankri is left relatively unharmed.

“Kankri Vantas, otherwise known as The Signless…”

The verdict is reached without a trial and you think no new horrors can be reached on this night.

The universe just loves to prove you wrong and a set of glowing cuffs smack you hard enough in the chest that you find yourself collapsing to your knees.

You are wailing and you can’t bear to watch as screams pierce your very being, you no longer break, there isn’t anything left that could make a difference to your level of sorrow now.

“ _ FUCK THIS!” _

The words are sharp and hold an anger you didn’t know Kankri possessed. Your head shoots up and the first thing is that there is more blood than before. You swallow back the bile, slowly standing with Mituna’s help.

Kankri is screaming his words with a passion you’ve never heard from before. It’s his final sermon and there is a strange peace that settles over you. They let him speak and you’re thanking the gods for small blessings. You swear to never forget the words.

And then he’s looking at you. You and Mituna and Meulin and your knees go weak while the grip on your hand strengthens.

You can’t hear him from here, but you know what he’s saying. Despite everything, despite thinking you never would again, despite the pain that makes your bones ache and your head heavy, you smile.

“You’ve done well my Dear,” you say in a whisper and pray that he gets the words.

Out of the corner of your eye you can see the Condesce. You spare her a glance and notice that behind her is a familiar rustblooded troll.

The Demoness.

You don’t see the arrow as it pierce’s Kankri’s side, you only see feirce fucshia eyes as they meet your and that cocky grin turns full on gleeful arrogance.

The Demoness is gone.

You fear for what she might have said.

“We need to run,” you whisper, only loud enough for your friends to hear.

Mituna’s eyes are locked onto Kankri and he doesn’t seem aware of the psionics that lick at your fingers and add static to your hair.

You tug on his hand, not daring to look at the one you had loved so well and so fully that you spent it all.

He looks over for you and you cannot name the look in his eyes. You only know that he will be seeing the execution for however much longer he ends up living.

“We have to go, now. We have to run,” you say again and this time he doesn’t argue and you push back into the crowd.

There is a clank of chains behind you and you know they’re taking down the body. When you check to see if Meulin is following, you can’t see her anyways. Panic chokes you but you swallow it down and force yourself forward, she can take care of herself and you have to pray that she makes it out alright.

“Save the yellow one for me, I think he could be useful.”

You had never heard the Condesce’s voice in person, but it’s just as grating as you imagine and you put an extra stomp to your step as you pull Mituna away.

“Shell her, krill her, I don’t care.”

Claws curl around a throat that’s just out of reach and it’s a spark of psionics that keeps you from turning around and attacking. Still, you can almost feel the blood pulsing in a soothing rhythm under your fingers and running over the back of your hand in cool fuchsia streams.

A yank on your arm has it almost pulled out of its socket as your hand is torn from Mituna’s and you let out a cry of mixed pain and protest as you see that several high bloods have put a mask over him to keep his psionics subdued as your own captor clasps a thick metal collar around your neck.

There is the snapping sound of a spark but you don’t know what could have caused it as the chain hooked to the collar is pulled and you are forced to the ground.

You look up at your captor and find  a sight that’s all too familiar. He wears the chains and collars emblem emblazoned on his collar, clear sign of a slave trader.

Perhaps you should be grateful to be alive.

You never see what happens to Mituna or Meulin as the metal cuts into the back of your neck, and you are dragged roughly to your feet, another pair of cuffs locked painfully tight around your wrists. You snap at your captor, tugging your hands away and baring sharp teeth, two fangs unique to your rainbow drinker status to be used as a threat.

The Ceruleanblood has none of it and back hands you hard across the face,  splattering your blood against the ground.

It hardly phases you as you lunge at him, all teeth and claws and feral rage.

Your face connects with his knee, though your sure your claws catch an arm. He kicks out what strength you had in your legs and for good measure, swings another kick at your midsection.

You cough and groan your head slams hard against the ground.

The slave trader starts to drag you by the wrists, long before you lose consciousness. You can see the pillar through blurred vision and you send out your final prayer to the universe that he’s happy in whatever life may be after this. Then with your consciousness, you lose all faith.

~~~

_ Pretending Someone Else Can Come And Save Me From Myself….(The Psiioniic) _

 

You land on the ground hard and ungraceful, stumbling a few steps as you struggle to regain your footing. Anger still flows through your veins and every nerve fiber, the flight did nothing to calm any strong emotions you had and they showed themselves in the red and and blue flickering around you.

You’ve landed in an alley only a few blocks from the cell block. It’s a small windowless block of brick and mortar with only one entrance in and out. Luckily there are only two guards, one that paces the perimeter and the other that stands guard at the door. They should both be easy enough to handle on your own, as long as you can take them both out fast enough so they don’t call for back up.

You try not to think of Meulin and Porrim, as you sneak the few blocks to get the prison into you sites, it only serves to upset you further and makes your psionics eratic and harder to control. Right now you need that control as you send a wave of red and blue crackling along the ground towards the guard posted at the door. They are just barely noticed before you send them shooting up the trolls back and sending a large pulse down his spine and into his brain.

He falls to the ground like a rag doll and you do the same to the pacing guard just as he comes around the corner and notices the body.

You expect you only have a few minutes at most before some notices and is brave enough to report the fallen guards and so you take a mad dash towards the door and rip it open with a crackle of red and blue. A few minutes should be plenty of time anyways, all you need to do is grab Kankri and get out. It should only take a few seconds really.

You find him easily enough, with only six cells in the block, three on each side. He’s sitting on the floor in the last on on the right and doesn’t look up until you hiss his name.

“Mituna,” he says, genuinely surprised to see you.

“Of course it’s me,” you say, the eye roll implied with out the need of actual action. “C’mon, the guards are down, but it won’t be long before they call somebody to investigate, we have  to get out now.”

He shakes his head and you about blow the gate off into the cell instead of just the lock.

You open your mouth to ask him what the fuck, because seriously, what the actual fuck and he stands, coming up and wrapping his hand around one of yours, holding it to the bar and distracting you from your current task of getting rid of the lock.

“This is—”

“No, don’t give me any of that, ‘this is how it’s meant to be’ bullshit. We’re getting you out and the girls can stop spouting bullshit about what to do when you’re gone.”

He looks at you and it is a sad smile that graces his lips. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now Mituna, but I can’t leave. We all knew this would come, if I escape now it won’t mean anything. They’ll hunt us down and not only will they kill me, but they’ll kill all of you as well. I can’t let that happen. At least this way you have a chance to escape.” You open your mouth to protest but he places a warm hand on your cheek and you fall silent at the welcome familiarity of it. “Not only that but if I run away, then what kind of example will I lead. I have to give them the other horn, I have to show that I am peaceful and willing. I have to show them that I accept my fate and will not resort to violence.”

“But this isn’t violence, this is running away,” you argue but you  know as soon as the words leave your mouth that it’s a moot point.

He gives you a smile and it is filled with an almost pale pity. He wants to join you, but he won’t. You find all resolve leaving your body and your psionics fizzle out as your hands drop from the lock.

“You’re really going to stay aren’t you.” You say this softly, as if spoken quietly, it won’t be true and he’ll just laugh, say he was teasing and ask you to break him free, just as he did for you all that time ago.

He shakes his head. “I have to be an example of my own words. What better way to prove to those who doubt than to show then that the spirit carries on, long after the body has burned.”

“They were right,” you say and a tear or two slides down your cheek as you rest your head roughly against the bars.

He says nothing and allows you to continue.

“The girls, they said that was was being selfish, that I only cared about what you had done for me, what you could keep doing. I’m so scared of losing you, I never thought about what you had wanted. They were right, I was erasing everything you had built yourself to be by refusing to care about your message.”

Chapped lips press against your forehead and despite the fact you are stooped over slightly, you know he has to stand on tiptoe to do so.

He wipes away the tears with a thumb and you look up to see nothing but compassion in his eyes, a compassion you think now more than ever that you don’t deserve.

“It’s okay to be a little selfish Mituna. I’m glad I could be someplace safe for you, a comfort and a home that you never had in your younger years, but just remember, that warmth, that kindness that you welcomed from me, is also part of my message. I hope that you will do the same for others as I have done for you. That’s all I wish.”

The tears are silent but coming hard down your face at a pace you can’t stop.

“Kankri,” you say, nearly choking on the name, and this is the moment, you know, this is when you have to let him go.

“I will, I promise. You can rest easy knowing that all three of us will live and keep your compassion alive. I will do this for you, so please have peace.”

His smile looks tired now and he reaches through to take your hand, pressing the palm to his lips. “And do it for yourself Mituna. I care for you very deeply and I want nothing more than for you to live on in the peace and content I was able to show you existed.vb tgr5ff

You nod and your throat won’t let you say any more as you pull you hand back through, wrapping it around his to keep it with you as you pull it to your own lips, kissing the knuckles with a broken tenderness, your tears salting your lips and leaving damp spots on grey skin.

There’s a moment of hesitation before you reach through and pull him gently to the bars, kissing the top of his head, burrying you nose and breathing him in, returning one last favor, before one more glance and you’re leaving the block.

~~~

You are immediately hit with something sharp as soon as you leave the door. Your psionics crackle on instinct but instead of exploding out like they should have, the fall in sparks and fizzle out into nothing.

“What the—” a wave of dizziness over takes you and you sway, fighting to stay upright.

You finally take notice of your surroundings and notice a small group of high blood guards surrounding the entrance to the cell block.

Whoops.

They must have hit you with some sort of psionic represant, a commmon formula to keep on hand as a guard, useful for unruly slaves. You had endured its effects when you were younger, before you had learned. They must have used a whole lot of it though, but cause usually just one dose is hardly enough to suppress your power.

They don’t attack you, not yet at least, you can only figure that you confused them with a lack of Signless in your wake.

When the first attack comes, you would have been more ready if it wasn’t for the drug blurring your vision and making it hard to stand.  The blade slashes across your arm, but your body has gone a little numb so it’s nothing more than a stinging sensation. You, again on instinct, attempt to lash out with your psionics but there is barely a flicker in the corner of your eyes before they die out again. You curse your luck and barely dodge the next attack.

And just like that they all rush at you at once. It doesn’t take much to trip you up as your world begins to tilt and you are flat on your back staring at a sword that is swinging towards your head. You roll out of the way, but the tip gouges deep into your cheek, allowing blood to flow down into your mouth. You spit it to the ground and barely get to your hands and knees before a club comes down hard on your back forcing you back down with a sharp sound. An ax comes down by your face and you bless the poor aim as you scramble to crawl away, wishing you had learn to fight with something more than your psionics. Or learned to fight at all.

A foot clamp downs on your ankle and you let out a cry a the dangerous pressure. You once again try to force your psionics, completely aware this time that they are out of commission. They flutter around your eyes before frustratingly going silent again.

You’re vision is starting to clearing up though. It seems they had given you enough to knock you powerless, but not for very long. You keep this revelation to yourself as you roll out of the way of the ax again and swing your legs up and at the knees of a violetblooded troll who wasn’t expecting the move and crumples with a grunt to one knee. You scramble to your feet, staying low to avoid the swinging sword and then standing completely, swinging around wildly to punch one of them in the face. It misses of course but you are steady again and while they laugh at the wild swing you take a sword slash to the side, as you avoid an ax to the throat.

You are much better at dodging than you are fighting and you gain several more cuts and bruises while you wait for your psionics to wake back up from the slog that the drug put them in.

And then— a spark of red, a spark of blue. You’re back.

You send out a powerful wave, strong enough to knock them both off their feet and out of consciousness, if not killing them completely, The walls crack on the prison building but you don’t feel the least bit sorry. You resist the urge to run back in for one last chance Kankri to comes with you and instead take off into the woods.

You may have confessed to Kankri that you were wrong, but there is no way you can face the girls now and admit the same thing, not when the emptiness in your chest is still so raw and you’re still trying to figure out how you’re going to be to the world what Kankri was too you.

~~~

When you find the girls at the execution a few days later, there is no anger, only relief. None of you say anything, only find comfort in each other’s touch. You never feel like they hold anything against you, which would only be reasonable for them to do, in your opinion at least. But instead their presence is unassuming and gentle, there is sorrow there, but not for you. You will all mourn in your own ways, but you think that you’ll each find a way to move on as well.

~~~

You can’t stop staring. The scene is horrific and you can’t look away. You’ve lost all feeling in your limbs, your stomach has twisted so tight you don’t think you even have one any more and it’s pushed all it’s contents into your throat instead and  _ you can’t look away. _

This will haunt you and when Porrim finally gets your attention, she knows it too.

You follow her without a word because her and Meulin are all you have left and if they are walking face first into death, you will follow just to not be alone again.

How is it that you already feel so lonely and when he is yet to grow cold and you can feel Porrim and Meulin’s hands firm in each of your own.

But then Meulin pulls away but Porrim doesn’t slow down and when you turn around to catch Meulin’s hand again, she has disappeared into the crowd.

You see the look on Porrim’s face when she notices the disappearance as well, but also the set in her jaw and the fire in her eyes that burn with determined trust. You follow her lead and hope that Meulin makes it out alright.

“—Krill her, I don’t care.” You barely catch the Condesce’s voice as she draws closer. You understand now why you’re running and you pick up the pace a little more, preparing a bout of red and blue psionics to fend off any pursuers.

You are reaching the edge of the crowd and a part of you believes that if you can break free, you can full on sprint and lose them in the winding streets.

But your luck has never been that good and so before you have time to react,  helmet is strapped over your head and the wave of psionics that are released in response are killed on the spot. Porrim’s hand is ripped from your own, but you are blinded by the helmet and cannot see where you lost her.

You let out a scream, once again trying to explode your psionics on any troll that dares be near  you, but they barely leave your eyes before they are just gone again with hardly a flicker.

You pant heavily and your wrists are cuffed together. There is a sparking and a fizzing to your left and the small puff of a tiny explosion.

“Holy shit, My Empress, you were right, he’s off the charts. The helmet can’t read him it’s too much.” There was a pause and then much quieter. “He broke it.”

“Good. Have him shipped to the hangers, I  have an idea for him,” said the Condesce and you are left struggling against much stronger arms, wondering if the bitch has left or if she’s getting her kicks off watching you flail so pathetically.

There is a tap to the side of your head and a sharp shock shoots into your ear before everything goes black.

~~~

The first thing you notice when you wake again is that you’re alone. Then again, it was always bound to end up this way, wasn’t it? You rest your hands in your knees and realize that the helmet has been replaced with a piece of headgear that is attached by several wires to a machine that flashes at you numbers, words and symbols you can’t understand. Your hands are restrained above your head and your feet strapped to the table you find yourself laying on. You try to break free but find you don’t have the strength. Any attempt to use your psionics only sends the red and blue down the wires from the head gear to the machine that flashes with new numbers and symbols. You give up on that, figuring it’s only give whatever crazy scientists these are exactly what they want.

You look around again trying to piece together your surroundings,  but you find yourself even more lost than before when you are unable to place the room you were in, and you had seen a lot of places.

The room is small and taking up most of the space is pink tentacle like pipes or tubes or… something, it was hard to tell, but the covered the walls, the floor, hung from the ceilings like  great sleeping beast ready to wake at any moment and devour you.

It was mildly terrifying.

There is also a layer of standing water that reaches up to the base of your table. At least you hope it’s water.

There is the clicking and whooshing sound of a door opening and you turn your head to try and see who entered the room but they come in from behind you and you are unable to twist you head that far, so instead you listen. The gentle tap of feet on stairs then the rippling of water as they wade over to you.

“Ah, you’re finally awake, it’s about time.”

There is a pleased sneer in the troll’s tone. You can finally see them, your odd angle from the table making them large and looming. 

A female troll from what you can tell, with violet painted lips and silver pierced ear fins. She wears a tight lap coat, splattered almost decoratively with what you can only guess to be blood, as if she prided herself on the mix of colors and didn’t bother to wash them out completely.

You swallow hard.

“Where am I?” You don’t actually believe that you’ll get a straight answer but you feel the need to speak and it seems as safe a question as any.

“The Battleship Condescension. More specifically, the engine room.” The troll says easily, turning to the machines so you can no longer see her face.

So maybe you would get a straight answer, but something tells you, perhaps the sharp feeling in your gut, that you would be better off not knowing.

“It’s good that you’re awake, it’s much more fun this way. We get better readings as well.” She pressed a few bottons, the clacking sound echoing in the small room.

“The Condesce can be rather magnaminous at times, of course, only when it benefits herself. At this point I don’t mind, because it means I get to play.” She turns around with a scalpel. “You should count yourself very lucky. You’re going to be in permanent service to Her Imperious Condescension.” She’s almost gleeful as she presses the blade to your arm and you hiss, pulling away in a jerk reaction but unable to move. “This is a very high honor you know. You’re gong to be powering the most powerful ship in the fleet, it’s a very important job and you’ll be the first! With your level of psionics we’ll be able to conquer galaxies!”

You close your eyes as the troll babbles on, precise in her insicions, but excited and careless in her words. Not that you can do anything with them, you’re stuck here, once again as powerless at the start of your life.

The worst part is you don’t think it’s the capativity, or the cuts and integrating of the pink vine-like structures into your nervous system. Even as time passes and the ship literally grows into you and you become nothing but a power generator, even as you become accutely aware of every microfiber of the ship and each hit is like taking damage to your own being, even as your screams become silence as the pain become as everyday as breathing, even as you  struggle to become numb but your mind refuses to let you and blood constantly flows from between your lips. None of this even comes close to the level of pain and regret of a broken promise.

You never even got the chance to try and being forced to live with that is probably the best punishment you could think of.

To the Condesce, part of you is grateful, but to the Signless, no, to Kankri, you will forever be sorry.

~~~

_ Where We Go Is What We Become…(The Disciple)  _

 

When your hand slips from Mituna’s, you wish you could apologize. You’re gone before either of them have a chance to turn around.

You should have said goodbye when you had the chance, but then they would have tried to stop you and you couldn’t afford to change your mind, your task was far too important.

Your plan had been building for days, ever since your argument with Mituna. As angry as you were at him for his selfishness, that his devotion to the message of the Signless wasn’t on par with yours, you couldn’t completely blame him. It hurt to agree with Porrim and actually vocalize that trying to rescue Kankri would do more harm than good. You wanted to save him! Of course you wanted to save him! You were ready to give your life for it. But if you had learned anything over the past several sweeps taking down the word of The Signless, it’s not the body that matters and after you finished crying, you finally accepted that it wasn’t Kankri that needed to be saved, but the Signless, as an idea, a concept, a leader and an inspiration. Kankri was the man locked away somewhere, he was the one that Mituna had rushed off to say, but it wouldn’t make a difference, he wasn’t the one that filled the notebooks you had stored in the bag slung over your shoulder.

And so you made a plan.

You would mourn, albeit in a quieter method than what you had done for your lusus. Kankri Vantas had been every quadrant and none of them all at once. He was something special on his own, in those intimate moments between the sermons when you would touch and whisper, when he would laugh and you would join in and everything would be warm and okay. You were a devoted follower of the Signless, his most dedicated disciple, but Kankri was the one you had fallen in love with. When you secluded yourself, it would be the Signless words that you would be writing, but it would be Kankri that you would be missing, it was for him that tears would stain the page and make the in splotch and run.

You have disappeared into the crowd before Mituna or Porrim have had the chance to turn around to see where you’ve gone. You whisper an apology they would never hear and wipe away a tear. You can hear the Condesce yelling her orders, but she’s too focused on your friends to bother pursuing you. There is a heavy guilt that threatens to slow you down, but there is nothing you can do for them now. All you can do is hope they get away.

You had seen an public execution before, in another city, before your first pupation. It was a tealblooded troll that used to work some sort of job for the Condesce before ultimately betraying her. Or at least tried too. She had obviously been captured and executed in the center of town, hung from the same kind of pillar that they were now taking the Signless down from and finished off in the same way, with an arrow piercing deep into her body.

You knew what happened next and swallowed back bile as they stripped the clothes from the body and lit the pile of wood underneath him without ceremony and without respect. A spark of flame that quickly turned to a blaze and you choke back a sob, covering your nose from the smell that quickly begins to permeate the air.

The cloths are tossed to the side and with the executioner’s back still turned you scramble forward to grab them. The only thing you have left of your beloved, smelling of blood and smoke and  _ him. _

The creak of a bow has you looking up and into the eyes of the executioner. His bow is drawn, a blue feathered arrow knocked against the string, but his hands shake. You swear you can see his lip quiver and he hesitates, the arrow that should already be piercing your chest is still resting within the cradle of the bow.

You stare at each other for what feels like a lifetime. You don’t dare move but the look on his face is slowly morphing from stoney and unreadable to clear distress.

He pulls the string a little tighter, looking pained, as if killing you hurts him more than it will you and this is something that’s really tearing him apart inside. You stare him down, almost daring him to release the arrow but then he lowers it with a teary sigh and at the slightest moment you are gone. You will not take your chances by sticking around or questioning the strange ways of the universe.

It takes a few days, but you end up finding an abandoned brooding cavern and hiding yourself deep inside, you begin to write. You start to write and when you run out of paper, you take the blood of your kills and begin to paint the walls.  The mix of colors soaks into the walls and paints a satisfying picture. You are missing Kankri, but you think he would approve. This way, he will never really die


	8. Chapter Seven: You Can't Wake Up This Is Not A Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If only she would leave you in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter of the binge. The rest is unfinished. Please excuse any and all errors and pray one day I actually finish this.

Your movements are clockwork precision, a clock that has been meticulously maintained and lovingly cared for. There is hardly a creak as you draw the arrow, nothing more than an exhale of breath as you release the arrow and it hits its mark seconds later. You only bother to wait while it finishes it trek through the air, not out of fear of misjudgement, but out of a sense of pride. A silent assurance that you are as good at your job as you know you are.

The teal blood is hard to see from this distance, but your glasses hold advanced mechanisms of your own design that allow you to enhance your sight with startling clarity. It helps with the precisions of your shots and makes sure you never have to shoot twice. No point in wasting arrows after all.

Lowering your bow, you content yourself with a job well done and look forward to returning home.

Your hive is a secluded place, your lusus long gone, leaving you to your own devices, rather literally. Tools and pieces of metals and wires and starts of various machines scatter every corner and the mess soothes you. Machines were much easier than the complicated mind of the trolls. You would think that if you were able to, you would turn yourself completely into a machine, but there is no one you trust to keep up maintenance and so you settle for the meat sack you call a body and use your brilliant mind to build perfection. Machines don’t argue, don’t have silly emotions to disrupt necessary functions, they follow the orders they were set out to do and do not question how or why. Programming errors rarely become and issue and are often easily fixed. They are wholly, and indubitably dedicated to their duty and task. They are perfection because it is impossible to be anything but. It is a state of being you strive and long for with every synapse in your body.

It is but a pipe dream, but a dream all the same, and for now  you are happy enough with proving precision through duty and remaining as empty and emotionless as a machine. Sitting down at your desk, you pick up a screwdriver hardly any bigger than your finger and adjust some components on your bow.

You have hardly been working an hour, when there is a knock at your door. You do not startle, as it is impossible for any troll to surprise you in a way that would have a physical reaction, but you grimace all the same. At first you choose to ignore it, but when the knocking continues, quickly devolving into persistent patterns of eight, you know the shouting is soon to follow, and you will be needing to a fix door not long after that.

You have no choice but to answer, it is less of an inconvenience of in the long run, or so you have learned from past experiences.

Marquise Spinneret Mindfang is perhaps one of the most stubborn and obstinate trolls you have ever had the displeasure of meeting. A ceruleanblood only one tier bellow your own, you don’t begrudge the caste difference as much as you might a lesser troll, but you find her sense of pride misplaced and lacking discretion. It irritates you in a way you have yet to find in any other troll. She found you through word of mouth some sweeps ago, asking for some odd job. After many no’s, you finally agreed just so she would leave you in peace.

But then she kept coming back. It wasn’t often, just every couple of sweeps and only grew worse when she gained that violetblooded troll as a kismesis, a pairing that ground gears together with a squeal inside your head and left you with a whining migraine whenever she came back with some new request.

She leans against the doorway, casual and tenacious, a smirk that you are sure is permanently fixated to her lips because it’s  _ always there. _

You say nothing as you step aside and watch her saunter in and the lowblooded feeling you get from the action has you silently grinding your teeth and shutting the door behind her a little harder than you should.

“I have a request,” she says, easy and familiar with a hint of snark, not even bothering with a hello or any variation on formality as she leans against the corner of your work desk and picks up a piece of an arm you have yet to finish.

You inhale deeply and let it out slowly.

She takes this as a means to go on and a sign of the barely repressed annoyance and urge to tell her to take her strange eyes and sharp tongue to someone who might actually care that it actually is. Or perhaps she knows exactly what it is. She’s smart, cunning even, she knows the nuances of those she cares to make deals with, she does not allow herself to be fooled.

“It’s simple really,” she says, setting the arm piece back on the desk and standing. This relaxes you a bit, but you stand as stoic as ever and you don’t think she notices, or cares. She reaches into the inside pocket of her long coat. It is intricately designed, a craftsmanship that you would have better appreciation for if you were more into the textiles, but an appreciation all the same from one creator to another.

Her hand returns to view from the depths of her coat with a perfectly round white ball that fits perfectly into the cup of her palm and the curl of her fingers.

“All you have to do is hold onto this for me, you can set it in a corner and forget about it for all I care, I just need it with you.”

You find yourself fidgeting and finally take the ball for no other reason than to stop. The smirk is gone from her lips but shines in her eyes.

“Why,” you finally ask, and you regret it in an instant.

Her face lights up with an almost giddy pride, as if her whole goal was to get you to speak. You are certain hubris will be her downfall, or so you can hope.

She waves her hands as she talks, flicking them at the wrists, this way and that, making a show as if her loud voice wasn’t enough.

“Let’s just say you hold a certain… void with an acquaintance of mine,” she replies, which really, is no answer at all.

In what you assume is an attempt to pacify you as she senses your displeasure, she continues on quickly. “Of course, this will bring no hindrance to you whatsoever. This is simply between me and the acquaintance. Stick it on a shelf somewhere and forget about it,” she says, backhanding the air as she crosses her arms over her chest.

“What is it?” You ask this not as a longing for more conversation, which of course, you could do without, but with the resignation that if you are in fact speaking any ways, you might as well get as much out of her as you can.

“An oracle,” she says simply.

Ah. That does not seem like something she would give up so lightly. You look down at the white ball and shift it over to your other hand.

“And why give it up? It seems something like that would be useful to you.”

“It grants connections and insights into my actions that I don’t need right now, especially not from  _ him. _ ”

You don’t bother asking who ‘him’ is, in the many conversations you have only half listened too, usually only enough to nod along and seem like you’re paying attention, she had mention this mysterious entity that calls her protege. She never went into enough detail to be interesting though and so you had forgotten about it as you did with most conversations.

“I see. And I…?”

“Block his vision. You’re a little hole in his omnipotence. He has several that I’ve been searching out, but you’re my safest bet at the moment.”

You purse your lips and set the orb on the desk where it rolls only slightly before falling still again. There is a peculiarity about it that has you feeling uneasy, but you push the feeling aside as it will do nothing but cause an unneeded and hindering paranoia.

You don’t ask how she knows this, as it is irrelavent and you want to cut this conversation as short as possible. You do however, have one final question.

“Why now?”

“I saw my death.”

You are both silent for a long time, both staring into nothingness as these words settle and come to a mutual understanding in the air between you.

Finally she turns in a single, sweeping motion and heads back for the door.

“Hate to chat and run, but my little black love will get antsy if I’m away to long.” She blows you a kiss and the door closes seamlessly with a click behind her.

You hope that someday, if fate would allow it, that she would be hanging from the execution pillar and you will have the chance to send an arrow straight to her chest, her arrogance heavy in the pointed head that pierces her.

~~~

You have killed hundreds, thousands maybe, and you are proud of it. Each troll that hung from that pillar was deserving of their fate and what greater pride than to be the one to deliver the finishing blow. You never missed which meant you never had to fire more than once. This was not out of pity for the accused, to make their deaths swift and painless, but instead for your own selfish pride and obsession with precision. Taking more than one shot would be nothing less than sloppy and you simply would not have it.

But this case was strange. You did not know any more than you needed, but rumors spread and even you were not immune to riots and rebellions that arose in your society. You were more aware than you wished of the mutant blooded troll who’s words sparked a revolution and his group of ‘friends’ not to mention the countless followers spread out throughout Alternia. He was unique simply in the span and strength of his influence. You knew more about this troll than any you had executed before and it bothered you a little and you feared you would lack the emotional detachment you preserved with every execution when the time came.

You don’t know why you let him speak, you were not swayed by his words, not like the many lesser trolls that had gathered at his feet for the past several sweeps. You did not believe in the peace he spoke of or the need for it. Society now was in a balance of a precarious nature and each troll had it’s place, whether it was slave or executioner, Empress or pirate. The mutant’s passion however was toxic and invigorating and you sickeningly had a bit of respect for him for that. It was impossible to not feel a little camaraderie with a troll who would use his last breaths to carry on his duty, even if that duty was self-assigned and misplaced.

You hardly remember what he said, even seconds after he’s finished, but it’s not until he hangs his head again that you finally raise your bow. You are acutely aware of his small posse that stands at the front lines to watch and you hope they see it through and understand that not only were they mislead and that this is exactly how such heretics should be handled, but that they would not be allowed to make their own amends by returning to their rightful places on the spectrum. You were here to do your job and you would make sure it was done.

You are as poised and relax as you could possibly be, not only feeling in your prime with the arrow slotted into its string, but almost happy. This will be your biggest job yet and you know with absolute certainty that you will accomplish your task with the utmost precision.

Your arrow misses.

You slowly lower your bow and simply stare, your lips in a tight and emotionless line. No one calls you out and you don’t know what you would do if they did. The mutant troll was beaten have dead, wasting his few remaining breaths on his Final Sermon, long before you ever let the arrow fly, but still, it did not hit the target as intended and your grip tightens around your bow as you let this fact settle throughout your whole being.

You watch with blank expression as the last bit of life leaves the body and there is no grim fascination or pride, only utter betrayal at your own self. You try to remind yourself that the task at hand was still completed to satisfaction but then you also remind yourself that it is not to  _ your _ satisfaction that is only seconded to the Empress.

You turn to apologize, assuming the movement behind you is her. You are correct in this assumption, but it is not towards you she is moving. In fact, it doesn’t seem she notices you at all. Normally you would appreciate this, it’s always better when you can avoid an sort of social interaction, but it is an extremely rare occurance that she would attend an execution and you must make amends for your failure to present yourself properly. You feel that the devestating blow of your missed shot is pushed deeper into a growing wound as she proceeds to call out orders that you barely catch. She is upset with you, angry and now you are being shunned. She no longer trusts you to do your job after such a spectacular display of failure and is taking care of two of the posse on her own terms.

You feel crippled, but as you are drowning yourself in your own cascade of increasing self pity, your second chance presents herself with nimble steps and olive green eyes. She has the Righteous Leggings that the heretic was wearing at her death and her face is stained with tears you can’t understand.

“Kill her.” The command comes from behind you, though you don’t know from who. However you are already raising your bow, an arrow resting between your hands as you take aim.

This is your chance to redeem yourself, but how is it that your hands shake, that you feel this tightness in your chest that is unfamiliar and making it impossible to breathe? You hesitate for the first time in your life and you think that hits far deeper than an slightly missed shot ever could.

Your mind is turmoil and you can’t sort through to find any sort of thought that would provide an explanation for why your hands refuse to cooperate. You know what you should be doing, what should already be done, but the arrow still sits against it’s string, your elbow poised beside your head, your fingers tense and ready to release but you are frozen and an overwhelming sense of pity floods your every sense.

She is looking at you now and you wonder how long you have been meeting her eyes. There is a fleeting sense of beauty in the daring look she gives you and the feeling of wanting to ask her why she cries is almost too much to bear. She always knew he was going to die. He was a low blood, far lower than her own caste, as well as a mutant, there was no way he was going to survive in this world. You want to explain all this to her, you want her to understand more than any troll you had ever met. Most of all, you want her to be okay.

Your hands are lowered and your bow dropped before you even realize that you are moving and she is gone the minute you show sign of release.

The corner of your eye twitches as you settle into what you have done. You can hear her scream and you realize that it is in fact a memory. You don’t remember hearing it before when you killed the mutant, but it is clear now to your own ears as if it never stopped. Part of you doesn’t think it ever will.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” The yell is harsh and accusitory and the full weight of your actions here sends you crashing to your knees.

_ Oh God. _

What  _ have _ you done? You stare down at your bow which now lays useless on the ground in front of you and you repeat the question outloud to yourself as if you could find an answer that way.

“What have I done?”

You are running on instinct now more than ever and it gets you to your feet. You turn to see several of the highbloods that were running the execution stalk towards you. You think you can explain but when they draw their weapons you realize that diplomacy is the worst option here, highbloods and their volitile tempers hardly lend themselves to the attempt and it would only be done on your part as an attempt to keep what little pride you have left. Of course this would end with the loss of two things: whatever is left of your dignity and your head.

So instead, you run. You have strong legs and you trust that they carry you far. You may not go out much, but you have your ways for keeping in shape, it is as much as about maintaining your image as it is something to do to keep your body as strong as your mind in between tinkerings.

You don’t doubt that the highbloods will be able to keep up, but you have ways of vanishing, of slipping around a corner and disappearing into the shadows or getting lost in a crowd. By these means, it doesn’t take long for you to loose any sign of pursuit and you take a moment to recollect yourself in the shadows of a back alley.

So you have essensially signed your own death warrant and any sight of you will get you killed. If you’re going through with this, you will have to leave. You don’t know what there is left to live for now that you have been stripped of any sense of duty you have now found pride in, but you will not let yourself stoop so low to let yourself be lost to death. You are much to strong for that and you have too much of a brilliant mind to go to waste.

That still doesn’t solve your problem as to what you were going to do next. You already cleared staying as not an option. You might be able to risk going back to your hive and grabbing a few thing, but it would have to wait some time before you are able to do that, and then you will have to—

The thought that crosses your mind next is not a pleasant one.

In fact, it makes you quite sick to even think of it as a possibility but you aren’t sure there is any other option. Then again, there perhaps is, but you have a gut wrenching feeling that this is perhaps this is the best.

The Marquise is good at what she does after all, and you can’t fault her on that.

~~~

It was a last minute decision to grab the white orb, but if you are to convince The Marquise to harbor you as an self-exiled fugitive, you will need to show her that you took her request all that time ago seriously.

You don’t have much as you wait in the shadows of the docs, you were forced to leave most of your work behind. This bothers you less than it should, but you can hardly bring yourself to care any more. You only hope that what luck you seem to be having the past couple of weeks holds out and you don’t have to wait long before she docks.

You asked around, awkward and unwilling and you are certain that this is the pier she most commonly docks. Still, you are forced to wait two  agonizing days of paranoia and second guessing before she finally arrives.

She respects you enough to be surprised and you silently thank her for that.

“It seems the tables have turned my friend, and what gives me the honor of bringing you to my domain.” She is smirking again, but there is something friendly about it that you refuse to see.

You considering correction on the implication of calling you ‘friend’ but it is not worth the time or effort and you set yourself straight to business before all those doubtful thoughts can make you turn back.

“I wish to make a proposition.”

She raises an eyebrow and you wish she would put it back down and not pretend to be so overtly interested. “Oh?” The sound is lilting and almost sly, it makes your insides churn.

“It is only fair that I ask a favor for the many I have granted you.” It wasn’t out of the kindness of your heart, but more as a dire need to be left alone that you had granted her any of it, but she does not need to know your negative thoughts on the situation. If you are going to be granted access to her protection, you need her on your side.

She inclines her head slightly and says nothing. She is leaning against a post that juts up from the water at the edge of the pier and her arms are cross casually over her chest. You wish she were more alert, more cautious, especially considering what you were about to ask.

“I wish to travel with you. I need to leave here as soon as possible and you are rather good at… staying below the radar.” You grind your teeth with each word and watch as her grin grows. She stands up a little straighter, almost leaning in towards you. She thinks she’s won and you hate how small it makes you feel. You never meant for this to be a competition, but regardless, you are losing control.

“You could say that,” she said, sharp pointed teeth menacing when shown between lips spread in an excited grin. You know she likes to win, to be on top and in control. She can’t lose and it’s this very philosophy that stokes the fires of her hubris.

It is also what makes her exceptionally good leader of a fleet of Gamblignants. Her pride puts her at the head of most things and makes her a figure worth fighting, a thrilling challenge that you might find in fighting her if you ever got past the detest you felt every time you saw her face.

You have made your case and refuse to say any more as she steps over and presses into your personal space until your chests are touching and  you are smothered you can’t possibly breathe. You have several inches on her, but you feel yourself shrinking as she assess your facial features with a finger. She licks her lips like some sort of animal attempting to turn you on and you can no longer meet her eyes.

“Alright,” she says finally, tapping your cheek and stepping away.

You can’t help as your shoulders slump in relief and you release a large exhale.

You want to say that was easier than expected, but it went exactly how you predicted. You had only wish it had been harder. Most of the time her predidctablity was welcome, now it was just infuriating.

“Thank you,” you say, a hint of real graditude, but mostly just filled with a loss of anything else to respond with.

“We leave at dawn, you are free to board now or finish any last minute business you wish to attend to before we leave.”

You nod and she turns to her ship, cupping her hands around her mouth and shouting to the crew on deck.

“He’s with me, fuck with him and I’ll feed the lot of you to the fishes, don’t think you aren’t replaceable!”

“Yes Ma’am!” Returns the chorus of shouts and she pats you on the shoulder as she saunters away, her heeled boots tapping confidently against the wood of the dock.

You straighten your shoulders a little more and walk up the plank to the deck of the ship.

There a few glances, but most of the workers are so caught up in the tasks they were assigned that they hardly notice you. You are satisfied with this, you hardly expected the Marquise to have anything short of perfection on her ship, even when she wasn’t around to bark orders, but it only gives you one more thing to respect her on and you aren’t sure your body can take any more.

You don’t set down your bag, but instead stand, looming and awkward, in the corner of the deck. You aren’t sure where to sit where you wouldn’t be in the way. From there you don’t move and it’s not until The Marquise comes stomping back onto the ship in a huff that you bother moving.

“Oh the nerve of him!” she spits. “We set sail for the west. NOW!”

Everyone drops what they’re doing and jumps to action and in a matter of minutes they are hoisting anchor and setting back out to sea.

The Marquise stomps past you four times before she seems to notice you. “Oh right, you’re here,” she said with more bitterness than you’ve ever heard in her voice.

You nod but don’t give her much more of an answer.

“Well, don’t just stand there! If you’re going to be on my ship, then you’re going to be helping. I won’t have you lazing about giving my crew ideas!”

You have never seen her so worked up and agitated. It’s rather unsettling when your image of her had always been extreme levels of degage and unfaltering confidence.

You aren’t quite sure what you are meant to be doing. You are more than willing to make yourself useful, if only you were given a task, but you aren’t familiar with the workings of any sort of seacraft and so you are far more likely to screw something up than you are to actually help.

She is well on her way to bossing other crew members around before you get the chance to ask and she hardly seems to notice in her rush of agitation that you haven’t moved since she last spoken. The fact that she seems to have forgotten about you so quickly does nothing but spark your ire to the point that you could scream. Of course you don’t embarrass yourself in such a way, you are far more composed than that. But the urge is there and that’s what counts.

As the shore disintegrates from a blurred line on the horizon to nothing at all, the moons set closer and closer to the sea’s edge and it seems like no time at all before you were shuffling bellow deck with the rest of the crew.

It was surprisingly spacious but you were still larger than many of the trolls and used to your empty hive and so despite having plenty of space to move around, you were having trouble getting comfortable. You suppose it’s only fair. It’s hardly makes up for the betrayal you’ve inflicted on your class and your duty.

You keep to yourself and it is after a sweep or two that the Marquise finally decides she had enough of you and kicks you from her ship. She mentions something about ‘having enough of your pitiful bemoaning’ and not being able to stand it any more. There was something more about ‘once respecting you’ but if you were being honest, almost all of it went over your head.

You end up finding a nice cave in the rocky mountain side that slowly you turn into a livable hive. With every stone moved and every hole dug, every piece of furniture built and every room furnished, she was always on your mind. The oliveblooded troll never once left your thoughts and you are left uncertain whether her haunting was any fault of your own masochism.

Regardless, eyes open or shut, you could see her. That feirce mourning and the way she clung to that heretic’s clothing as if she would maim any one who else dared try to so much as touch it.

And the way she stared at you, it was never the same. One time it would not be in fear, but in resignation, as if waiting, wishing for you to end her sorrow, other times there was an angry challenge glinting at the edges. Then you would blink they were filled with so much patience and forgiveness you felt your own tears brim the edge of your eyes.

You could never get the eyes right, each time your bloodpusher beat, they would change. You had every excrutiating detail memorized from that moment to the number of beats that pushed blood through your system to the number of tears that rolled down her cheeks before you lowered your bow, but you could never remember the eyes. Part of you wishes you could remember how she looked at you that day, what kind of expression she wore. This longing wasn’t out of the strong sense of self pity you had developed since then and your incessant need to punish yourself because of it. Something inside you actually missed her and on the best of days, you think that’s probably the worst part.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, questions, concerns? Feel free to contact me at my tumblr: rogueofpans.tumblr.com.  
> Thanks for reading!


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